NESing by the Numbers

EQandcivfanatic said:

What format would you prefer? Office makes it pretty easy to shift the data between formats.

Click to expand...

Because of my current line of work, I have Excel installed on the computer, but let my license for Access (and in fact all of the rest of Office) slide.

Surely no-one's afraid of joining or setting up NESes. Doesn't past experience show that most people are more confident about their capacity to run a NES than the reality of the situation warrants? The only thing stopping anyone from doing that is generally the justified fear that, on account of their own lack of energy, skill or time, their endeavour will not succeed.

All right, when I return to work on Monday, I'll transfer the core data file to Excel. It's more useful in Access personally, but I use Access more for my job than Excel.

@spryllino: Overall I agree, people are usually more confident than they should be when starting an NES. It is a justified fear as you put it for the reasons you mention. I am open to possibility that the basis of my assumptions and theories (i.e. that the health of the forum is best gauged by the amount of NESes created) is incorrect. I used to think that updates were a better gauge, but after looking through the past year, we've seen some good quality pure story NESes emerge which I think qualify as successful NESes. Still, isn't it unsettling that we haven't even had that many of those kind of NESes this year? They require minimal mod commitment.

Seeing as the NES forum is a community composed of people, perhaps the problem with regards to the declining number of NES's isn't so much anything to do with the nature of what is offered, but with a decline in the number of regular members of the community itself. (ergo people are leaving for various reasons IRL and otherwise who are not being replaced in the same proportions with people of equivalent commitment)

I have no statistics for this (I'm sure other people have relevant data), but if my perception is correct perhaps a good response would simply be to more actively recruit people to take part in NES's and get them involved (or even see about getting some of the older folks back in the game). I know I only found the NESing forum because a player in a certain NES asked if I wanted to join (I've played in five NES's since that point, of which only two were/are enduring, those being End of Empires and Capto Iugulum). If the number of committed regulars (as compared to occasional drop-ins) increases than we would I think expect to see a corresponding rise in offerings. If a numerical growth in players does not translate to an uptick in offerings, we can then presume other factors are in play such as being put off by quality concerns and so forth

-

As to myself, I've never moderated a game before and am generally not of a mind to start one since I'm not very adept at technology (map creation and excel). Not to mention due to the imminent completion of my degree I lack the time. Later in the year after I finish my studies though I could possibly start one, although I'd probably only take the leap after a good overview of existing and former management systems (since I have no idea where to start on that score )

I'm actually working on starting a StoryNES at the moment.

I think we do need some kind of, for want of a better word, 'simple' NESes, mostly because they are good at getting passersby to get into NESing. They join, they stick around for a bit, they learn how things work, and they make their own NESes. Capto worked when it was around because it was fairly intuitive to get into - you pick a small out-of-the-way country, you read the bits of the five updates that pertained to you, and you jump in. Thats how I got into NESing, at least. The other thing CI had was longetivity, because it got people to stay.

The other long-running NES, EoE, I feel, doesn't really have the newbie friendliness that CI had. The ordersets/update style/general backgrand doesn't seem that conducive to it. Not that thats a bad thing, of course, because its not, its just maybe we need something to pick up new players.

I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, I'm not really in EoE and maybe I'm just projecting my own fears onto it. Still, I don't think anybody will object to "a NES that is good at getting people into the community". Honestly I'm thinking of running one of my own (partially because I want to run a NES again ), and at some point in the near future I probably will.

Just inviting people to join so-and-so NES is a good way to get people who wouldn't otherwise glance this way to consider involving themselves (after-all an invitation establishes a friendly push in the right direction no?) but I do agree with you that a stable and relatively simple NES in the manner of capto would be something that would help ease people into more "in-depth" NES's (such as End of Empires, where I felt the need to read every update before joining due to the existence of a long-established in-game history/canon)

EDIT: Just on the question of IOTs being functionally indistinguishable from NES's. I would disagree with this assertion. All IOT's I have played in which I recall were effectively exercises in statistical manipulation (managing ones country utilising an understanding of the mechanics of the game) combined of course with political interactions with other players to get them to act in ways that advantaged ones own interests. The former aspect is something that to my experience is not really present in NES's (they obviously have a statistical-mechanical component in them to a lesser or greater degree, but much of that is hidden from the players leaving a much greater focus on various "RP" pursuits). This I think makes NES's much more engaging and interesting than IOT's and marks a clear distinction between the two forms.

I'm inclined to agree with Jehoshua. I became a member of the community due to a friend telling me about one of EQ's NES's. I've stuck around because I find the NES to be flexible and fun. I'm a fan of the simpler NESs simply because they require less time to participate in. As someone who has been on the path towards medical school, and was recently accepted out of state, the simpler NESs have allowed me to participate in ways that I couldn't sustain with a NES like EoE (though I would have liked to, and still do).

Am I the only person who got here by accident? xD

I registered in this forum exclusively for this subforum, but I confess that Civ V was what brought me here, where I accidentally clicked on a link called "Never Ending Stories". This is the randomness of randomness.

And EoE is not as complicated as it seems. The long deadlines make it possible to send more complete orders, and the stats are simple in my opinion. What makes a complicated NES are the stats in my opinion. If there are many rules, there is less fun.

I got here by accident through the Civ3 Stories and Tales link...

I got here by accident.

I was pulled here from forum games.

Notes: All posts from NESes, preview threads. Excludes, notably, arrival/departure threads, birthday threads, WWW, and the Dev thread. May data only collected through the 15th.

I didn't count preview threads in my numbers, but I don't think that'd drastically alter any results as we're looking at different data. I'd be interested to see data on posts from before 2014 for comparison before I would make any comment on that.

Yeah, unfortunately collecting this was an enormous pain.

North King said:

Yeah, unfortunately collecting this was an enormous pain.

Click to expand...

What was your method of collection, out of curiosity? Might be good to know if someone else decides to collect more.

Well, I wanted a breakdown by poster and by month -- partly for my nefarious plan to see which NESers I could recruit, but partly also for that scatterplot, to see whether the people posting lately were new or old people. So it was sort of a... post by post... venture. -.-

I think one could do it far more efficiently if one wasn't looking for that particular breakdown, or if one wrote a program to do it for oneself, but I am sadly only tech-savvy enough to know it's possible.

I've updated the first post with a new link that includes an Excel file in addition to the Access one.

EQ and North, thank you guys for the awesome statistics! Of course I felt sad because my NESes didn't pass very many updates, but what you guys did is created an great set of data for planning (and reflection).

Kudos

Thanks EQ . That was actually encouraging... I always thought I was much worse as a MOD, but apparently I average on 5 updates and my only DOA is that first post I ever made on the forum.

erez87 said:

Thanks EQ . That was actually encouraging... I always thought I was much worse as a MOD, but apparently I average on 5 updates and my only DOA is that first post I ever made on the forum.

Click to expand...

If we go by a purely statistical model I'd say your a long way from the worst mod, who shares his name with wooly livestock.