Make federations more central to the game

I'd love to hear input from other players here.

When I was new (a long time ago now), federations were THE key unit in the game. With war levels, they no longer are as seemingly important. However, federations still can do the following:

Teach players to play the game. Many federations are founded by experienced players who know more about the game. Retention of players is greatly impacted by the fun everyone has here. It's not fun if you can't make money (or don't know how to), can't conquer c3 countries, and don't know how to play. Good players can help make more good players, but there's zero incentive to do that right now.

Current issues:

1. Because of war levels, everyone has a choice to opt out of warfare. This likely won't change, but because of this, there is zero reason for someone to actually join a federation if that person opts to go peaceful. This reduces player interaction, and thus, interest.

2. This game is advertised as a "Massive Multiplayer Online Game." That's not really very true when players play in isolation. It's very difficult to even find players to interact with these days.

Proposal:

Make small gold coin or cash rewards for top federations available. Find some way to make economic competitions between federations. This could be related to number of players in the federation, largest populations, highest incomes, highest rated, or whatever. If a player wins an award from their federation, they could be ineligible for that award in subsequent months. If the award is a small cash boost, the rich players won't really care, they already have cash. I see some players with 1Q in cash in their holdings. These aren't the players the game needs help retaining. It's the smaller players who are trying to decide whether to go premium or not.

I'm curious if anyone else has ideas around what could be done to make federations more central to the game or more interesting to be a part of.

as you said federations are not working because of many things, mainly because there is no pvp anynore.

I agree with E_O completely.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm the mouthpiece for the WGA ;)

I'm not really sure how piling more rewards on top of the players that already get the rewards is going to incentivize newer players to stick around. That just makes the already top-heavy player base even more top-heavy.

As for me I avoid the PVP simply because I don't find PVP fun, and sadly there is literally nothing that will change that. The idea of logging in some day to find out my country I've spent days or months building is in rubble overnight while I was sleeping because someone bigger than me needed to stomp on something to feel satisfied is horrible.

I accept that it is fun for some people, but I cannot even begin to conceptualize how.

I'd love to hear your suggestion for helping improve the function of federations Mr. Beast. My concern is there is zero reason to interact with other players, and this is not supposed to be a single player game. Federations used to be the staple social unit in simcountry, but now they're largely pointless (which by default pushes players toward single-player). The game features very few useful or up-to-date instructions for how to play well, and I actively combat and set up my countries to be extremely different than the automated or "new player support" functions because they're quite ineffective. I (along with the other awesome veterans in WGA) attempt to provide pointers and explanations of why certain settings provide advantages, how to improve income, and how to get better at game mechanics to less experienced fed-mates. To my knowledge, there aren't other federations really offering any of this. I'm wondering how players can become competent without this support, and frankly, very few do.

I'm wondering what can be done to help new players learn in the first place and stay engaged with the game now that federations are not normally utilized for that purpose these days. In many/most large online multiple player games, there is some sort of "guild," "federation," "alliance," "clan," "syndicate" etc system. It's a popular concept for a reason. This game had that system, the system just was nerfed and weakened regularly over the course of a decade.

I have to dispute your view that giving out game cash awards would impact game balance. If an established "top-heavy" player like Lord Mndz, for example, won a 500b award he would hardly notice it. He has QUADRILLIONS in assets. I don't think it'd change any game balance or make him more top-heavy than he already is if he won some game cash. However, the people who can barely afford their first war CERTAINLY would benefit from an extra $500 billion. The gms have done a nice job updating their system to get new players more cash, but my thought here is more geared toward retention and giving players something else to work toward and contribute to within the game. Additionally, it also would be easy to devise rules to make players with certain account cash or empire sizes miss out on rewards if you really are worried about things getting too top-heavy.

My federation on White Giant currently has around 20 active players. Many members would benefit from another way to get financial support. Multiple long-term players in the fed REGULARLY experience debt. It's a normal thing for many players here to experience and it can snuff out accounts. Our federation does a great job of advocating for security council aid for our members for this very purpose. I don't believe there are other federations in the game that do this besides us right now, so if you're not in WGA, you probably aren't a good candidate for receiving any financial aid.

For what it's worth, while you're welcome to view and play the game as you wish, this was designed as a war game. About HALF the corporation types are military (or directly impact military functions, such as military supplies, gasoline, mil services, construction, offensive weapons maintenance etc).

If you want to spend months building a country that is completely safe, you have a secured main you can do that in. If you are worried your slaves might get attacked, you could buy a few weapons or try making friends and conducting diplomacy. I found that part of the game to be simple. I think it's a little naive to be upset at the idea that people could attack some (but not all) of your imaginary countries using the core game functions in a war game when you did absolutely nothing to prevent that or deter them. Players don't get attacked anyways these days.

Ultimately, I'm attempting to look for recommendations that increase player interactions and get experienced players helping new players. The community has dwindled greatly, and the game isn't as good with a smaller player base. Again, I'd love to hear your recommendations for how things can be improved.

Sadly I don't really have much to suggest other than vague suggestions.

But What you say is true, player interaction is low due to there not being much of a reason to interact.

I never said it would change balance. Though I can see how that assumption was made. Let me put it this way.

Imagine yourself a newer player in a younger country. Right about the time when your new account financial bonusses dry up and your economy isn't doing so well. Your looking around and trying to figure out what to do and you come across the monthly rewards page. All you see is Players who are so far beyond the need for cash in the game getting more o fit it because they are doing so well that they doesn't even need it anymore.

Its discouraging.

Another situation I've seen, imagine the same new player find other people in the forums in the same economic situation and the response from the games developer is that there is nothing wrong they just managed their economy poorly.

Even if its true its still a kick in the sack. If your lucky you'll come across some genuine advise from someone or insight early on. For me when I started and first tried my first slave state it came too little too late for me to maintain ownership of that slave so I abandoned it (which itself took me days to figure out I could do).

Now I'm not saying rewards should be removed or even changed. But updating information about the game might go along way in helping people figure things out.

Course now that I said I have no suggestions I did think up something.

Preface, I don't know federations so if this is already a thing I apologies.

Implement a Federation Assigned Roles, Budget/Taxes, and Military with the tax obviously intended to pay for the military and other benefits.

The military is Deployable (by the designated military commander or commanders of the federation) to any Warzone Declared by an external entity upon any Federation member, primarily for the purpose of defense.

It may also be used in any offensive war so long as the voting members of the Federation approve of (vote for) said war.

Basically NATO.

Federation Tax can also be doled by vote for various reasons such as development stimulus or disaster relief.

Also Consider a Casus belli system for justifying and defining war goals.

Not every war is simply conquest after all. The idea being if your intent is to conquer states you wouldn't want to destroy the population centers production facility's and infrastructure you would be taking ownership of.
Alternatively if you don't like that your neighbor is building and selling nukes to your rival You don't WANT his land you just want to blow up that factory.

Part of this is what the Security council already covers but from what I've seen the SC never really does much.

I actually have made a proposal regarding casus belli systems before as well, and think that'd be a fun idea.

Unfortunately, federations are 100% useless compared to what you proposed. The functions you suggested aren't really even close to what's currently available and would require an overhaul of the system. The only functionality they currently have that's used is shared air defense (if there are federated units nearby).

I think my main desire here is to get new players interacting with experienced players in a way that's beneficial to both. Running this through your example, if you're a new player and see there are awards for being in a top federation and see federations recruiting, you don't think that'd incentivize them you join a federation (and get rewards)?

Again, it's easy to penalize players in the scoring system if they've won awards in previous months so they can't win for a few months or design the system to create more parity in how the awards are divided up.

It certainly would help however I fear it will also be possible that something like Megafeds will become a thing.
Federations full of nothing but the topmost players who aim to get every reward possible.
RN I've won 1st CEO last Dec and again in Feb. Granted I was shooting for that goal and getting every score point I could get, leveled up from 3 to 4, started massively trading on the local market etc. So the penalty system might need some looking at to ensure rewards spread out more evenly. Especially if I can swing that again in April.

I would like to point out that it could be there aren't enough players who are actively playing that's influencing your views.

You won your second ceo award despite a huge score penalty. The reason you won is because there isn't enough competition, not because the awards system doesn't work.