Party Visability Still High After Absence

[van Rijn]

Just a question... How is it that a party that hasn't been active for more than 4 months can still maintain a very high visibility? It just seems a bit unfair that parties can just disappear and reappear for such a long period of time with no repercussions.

I also think some players are abusing this system as they can deactivate their party in one nation and go to another one and effectively go back and forth when something changes that they don't like...

What can the GM's do about this??

[Lucca]

I completely agree, and thank you for raising this issue. An inactive party shouldn't be able to reactivate and immediately dominate its nation by using its stored-up high visibilities from the distant past.

This doesn't even make intuitive sense. Let's say a party had been prominent in some nation a century ago, but for some reason it abruptly disbanded at the height of its popularity. Time passes. A century later, some citizens decide to get together and form a party under the same name as that one from the past (the equivalent of a party reactivating). Why should that new/revived party somehow immediately be declared the most prominent party in the nation, merely because its ancient predecessor had been the top dog back in our great-grandparents' day?

The simplest way to solve this problem would be for, if a party goes inactive, its visibilities to get set to zero at that time, as part of the deactivation process. If it later reactivates, it has to start again from scratch.
Unfortunately, this would have the unpleasant side-effect of, if a player accidentally deactivates, or gets deactivated in error, all of that player's party's visibilities will have been wiped out and need to be laboriously rebuilt again from zero.

I recommend a middle course.
Active parties gradually lose visibility as months and years pass. Let's simply apply this same process to inactive parties as well, treating them the same as active parties are treated for decay of visibility over time.
Of course, active parties can vote on bills to fight this trend and increase their visibilities. Inactive parties can't, so their visibilities would just slowly drift down until they hit zero ... or until they reactivate and start voting again.

Better yet, I feel that this would also be the most realistic way to handle this situation.
A real-world party that revives after a year or two of dormancy, will still have a lot of people remembering it and being willing to support it, although fewer than if the party had been continually active in the meantime. By contrast, a real-world party that collapsed a century ago, would be remembered by only a handful of historians, so it would need to rebuild its support from square one, just like a brand-new party would.

Please consider making this change? Thank you!

[GreekIdiot]

I recommend a middle course. Active parties gradually lose visibility as months and years pass. Let's simply apply this same process to inactive parties as well, treating them the same as active parties are treated for decay of visibility over time. Of course, active parties can vote on bills to fight this trend and increase their visibilities. Inactive parties can't, so their visibilities would just slowly drift down until they hit zero ... or until they reactivate and start voting again.

So, according to this, why should we reactivate parties at all? Let's just make new all the time, there's no difference actually, depending on your view on the issue of course.

[Lucca]

I agree that it is annoying when somebody creates a new party in the same nation where they already have an inactive old one. It clutters the database unnecessarily (just like creating a duplicate treaty or a duplicate org, instead of making use of the existing one, does).

However, 1) doing so with parties is apparently already allowed (or at least not effectively forbidden), regardless of my proposed change; and
2) I feel that this is a smaller problem, than that of an inactive party suddenly seizing total power in its nation after having been completely absent for a century or more.

For (1), possibly add a check to the registration sequence to compare IP addresses, and if the new registration's address matches one of an inactive party in that same nation, to display a message like "You already have an inactive party called the %s in the %s. If you would like to rejoin this nation, please post on the forum and request that that party be reactivated." instead of proceeding with the registration.
Unfortunately, this would entail substantial additional programming effort just to cover an uncommon circumstance ... and nation-hoppers would probably just evade it anyway.

If you have a better idea -- one which both would fix the problem mentioned by van Rijn and me, yet would also encourage returning players to reactivate their old parties instead of unnecessarily creating new ones -- then please post it?





Pondering this issue further, I can see how it has arisen at this time. Since Particracy is overall less active than it had been a few OOC years ago, parties that went inactive in the past are increasingly likely to have higher stored-up visibilities than current parties have.
To revive activity levels, we should be encouraging new players, instead of scaring them away. And for one or more new players to have built up some influence in a nation over an OOC week or two of proposing and voting ... but then see an old player hop from his current nation back into the one in question, reactivate an ancient party there, and immediately and (to the new player(s)) inexplicably dominate the nation despite having cast no votes whatsoever for the past IC century ... is not only nonsensical, it's also very discouraging for the new player(s).

[Gracchus]

I'm the party in question. All I have to say is that it sucks, man. It's been this way for years; don't worry, when you leave and come back the same will happen to you (which you have done before).

[GreekIdiot]

Damn my internet connection, I had a good speech written here. Should have used word *curses*. Anyhow, I'm against this, I was a new player, and despite what you said, most of us from that time are still here.

Besides, the current mechanic in effect is what makes things interesting and what can keep a player like me around Particracy. Surely, I have no problem to start over, but with a new party, in a new nation that I haven't created an account yet, and believe me they are many. It's nice to have a place to return to without starting from scratch. It doesn't look nice anyway, having a huge election history. You'd say its unrealistic, but hey, this is a game.

[The Mask]

Well I do use this at times as a strategy of sorts. But in my latest case of reactivation in Aloria, it can be justified by severe government dissatisfaction as evidenced in the previous election results that recorded a turnout of a "disappointing 51.82%". When we came in, together with the Conservative Workers Party, turnout for the last elections was a "satisfying 79.28%".

[Eryk]

Well I do use this at times as a strategy of sorts. But in my latest case of reactivation in Aloria, it can be justified by severe government dissatisfaction as evidenced in the previous election results that recorded a turnout of a "disappointing 51.82%". When we came in, together with the Conservative Workers Party, turnout for the last elections was a "satisfying 79.28%".

There are many ways that you can justify doing something like so. I've done it, and I will do it most likely. Actually, whenever we re-activate we do it.

However, we must not forget that parties in RL do not have something called "visibility". As long as they go according to the views of most of the population, and campaign across the country, they will win. In the case with Aloria, two parties were formed that must have fit the populations idea's (and of course, you had the re-activation bonus as well as the high visibility) and they won, or whatever you got in the elections.

I find that it is fine as it is. It is also a strategic advantage of being able to 'control' nations accordingly and creates more fun. I've moved around between some 20 countries in the last couple of months and each one of those accounts should have excellent visibility. And when I find I want to execute a certain political agenda in one, I re-activate and hope for the best. While if the parties/party in that nation have neglected visibility as an important factor and end up winning 0 or very little seats - that would be their fault. Not ours that we re-activated.

[Dond]

In the Republic of Vorona, the Preservative Party's visibility never changes or decreases despite the fact that they only propose one bill once a year whereby we, the Liberal Alliance almost propose a bill every month yet our visibility decreases very fast.

It is highly unfair and nothing short of an outrage.

[Jay (LDP)]

In the Republic of Vorona, the Preservative Party's visibility never changes or decreases despite the fact that they only propose one bill once a year whereby we, the Liberal Alliance almost propose a bill every month yet our visibility decreases very fast.

It is highly unfair and nothing short of an outrage.

Visibility has less to do with the amount of bills proposed per party and more to do with their voting. By the looks of things, the Preservative Party has (although with occasional exceptions) voted either for or against a majority of bills - hence why they manage to keep up their visibility even without making proposals of their own.

You do get an added boost at elections if you're party has been active in making proposals (especially if they're successful), so in the end you will be better off. But as far as visibility is concerned, it's all about voting.