Europeian Statement on Potential Demo/Auto Update

Recently, a proposal, tentatively called "Democracy / Autocracy", has sparked discussion in the technical forums of Nation States. The premise of the idea is that players in user created regions would be able to choose between having an executive founder, and thus regional security, or to receive a boost to recruitment by allowing newly created nations to spawn in their regions. While there has been some scattered pushback to this idea, as yet, the major concerns surrounding the changes have not been adequately addressed. Europeia acknowledges that there is a serious imbalance in the game right now that does need fixing, but this change does not come close to addressing those issues and instead appears to shoehorn R/D into the game, and to penalize anyone who doesn't wish to participate. In contrast, those who prefer to keep their governmental systems in place in this political game, will, to their detriment, be required to do even more work manually recruiting nations, with the end result being keeping up will likely be impossible. Many UCRs have noted recently that manual recruitment has been less effective than normal, and to propose a change that does nothing to address this issue, but forces regions to choose either this broken method of recruitment or to forego the security of their founder, seems like a move in the wrong direction.

Thus far, concerns have been waved aside, with no thought towards or even acknowledgement of the discrepancies laid out above. With Sedge acknowledging that one of the goals of the new system is the ability to permanently destroy communities, cultures, and decades worth of history, it is further alarming that this drastic change, is being advertised as a "relatively simple concept that doesn't make fundamental changes to the game's principles". We feel that this is not only false, but incredibly misleading. Despite protests that this change is radical and doesn't address, but instead relies on, a broken system to create balance in the game, the only questions being pushed are about the system itself. No attempt is being made to reach a middle ground with these concerns. Indeed, concerns about recruitment, even though it is an important part of the successful implementation of this new system, are being shunted off to other threads with no visible support from NationStates moderators.

Refuge Isle states in the technical thread that "directly assessing the problem of recruitment is a far more useful strategy for admin to make changes in to improve UCR health and break up power accumulation in feeders." In this, Europeia agrees and supports Refuge Isle, alongside other comments they have made in that thread. Despite their thought-provoking rejoinders, the lead is consistently buried, the point missed, and ultimately the way we enjoy NationStates currently, as sovereign political regions, roleplayers, card farmers, World Assembly loyalists, and issues-focused communities, among others, is being endangered. Europeia is taking a stance against the changes proposed, and encourages other, like-minded nations and regions to join us in expressing our opposition to these changes, as we've been told that these options only remain on the table so long as they do remain well-received.