The Future Trembles
the Unseen Potential of the Frontier Update
Written by Westinor
The Frontier Update has been a game-changing shift for Europeia, setting a new course for the region after over a decade and a half of history. Speculation heading up to the update ran abound, poking at the possibilities of what might come in a new update – two years ahead of the update, Europeia stood solidly against the prospect of such an update. A few months before, tides shifted as the update went from a vague destination somewhere down the road to an impending destiny at the heels of tomorrow. Europeia began to grapple with the reality that the Frontier update would happen, and set practical measures in response, from common recruitment policy to an actual debate and decision on whether Europeia itself would become a Frontier – and become a Frontier, we did.
Since Europeia has transitioned into Frontier status, the regional population has doubled, though whether this has actually been a product of the transition to Frontier is uncertain. Endorsements on the Delegate still remain below past years, even as they slowly trek on to somewhat stabler levels on Delegate UPC. The dynamics of gameside outreach and security have changed as the feasibility of Europeia actually being vulnerable to gameside attack went from impossible to just about, and whole institutions have changed the way Europeian government works – from the development of the Regional Security Council and endocap policy to the introduction of the Gameside Ministry. This is a reality that most established Frontiers face, and as the largest Frontier in the world, Europeia embodies much of what it has meant to be a Frontier.
But there are elements that get lost in the weeds. Europeia may be the largest Frontier and one of the most vibrant in the game, having led as the most established region in NationStates to have taken a leap across the void to Frontierdom, but our established institutions, the endorsements and security systems that have been cultivated for years on end, are not something shared by most of the hundreds of other Frontiers in the game. For most Frontiers, security is an issue. Being raided is an issue, and most Frontiers are either too inactive or too unaware of gameplay to know what raiding is and how to respond to it. This has monumentally shifted the way the world of military gameplay works – a world that most Europeians have not often taken close looks at for much of the region’s existence, and a world that still today remains foreign to the average Europeian eye. The relative detachment your average Europeian citizen might feel from military gameplay, even as the region leads the charge in multiple wars against raider regions, is not at all a bad thing – but ignoring key aspects of how one of NationStates’ most fundamentally integrated features works in the face of one of the biggest updates in the game’s history means ignoring key opportunities that can be seized and crucial vulnerabilities that may lead to disaster.
So what exactly has changed?
Raiding and Defending, or R/D, has largely revolved throughout its existence around the large-scale occupations of vulnerable regions. Historically, this has meant the continued occupation and liberation of historically founderless regions – Belgium, Christmas, Middle Earth, South Pacific, Anarchy, Japan, and more made up what was a relatively small pool of regions nearly as old as the site itself that were subject to occupation after occupation. Slowly but surely, as R/D streamlined in the late 2010s, military gameplay began to feel like a stale course served cold again and again – the same targets, the same outcome, with a few newly founderless backwaters entering and exiting the pool time and time again. Raided regions grew weary of constant conflict, often adapting to make occupations virtually pointless practices and growing distasteful for R/D and its impacts.
The Frontier Update changed everything.
Most of those historical regions are now safe. Defender efforts early on in the update secured a governorship for the large portion of regions that have been subject to dozens of raids in their lifetime. Their communities are left to quietly slumber the way they had wished to be, or find a renewed burst of energy in this new age.
But now, there are ten times as many regions that stand as viable targets for occupation. The Frontier Update has introduced a seemingly easy and appealing way for new players and fledgling regionbuilders to get a quick start in forming their community, and as a product, small Frontiers, dwindling from two to twenty endorsements, have popped up all across NationStates – and one by one they are picked off by a raider force larger than nearly any other in history, in a completely foreseeable and absolutely overlooked outcome of an update intended to stir conflict and intrigue. The paradigm of military conflict has changed.
No longer are regions established communities, veterans of more raids than the defenders attempting to liberate them. This has had pronounced impacts on raider success. Of the past nine major contested occupations, six were fledgling Frontiers, often leading the pack of non-Gameplay-oriented communities in endorsements and development, with established and complex governments and roleplay systems; two were historic regions that had transitioned to Frontier status; and one was a historically founderless region, Philippines, still maintaining its massive influence reserves over a decade of history. Of these raids, raider forces have successfully seized or refounded four – The Perfect Utopian Region, Yessssss, Magna Aurea, and Alcatraz. Four Frontiers, only one with a history longer than a few months. Out of some of these communities have come motivated and active players – the former Delegate of Yessssss is a Grey Warden, and some remnants of Magna Aurea have flocked to raider regions. None were on the map before their raids, and yet within them existed actual, real potential for development, for growth, and for relevance – not yet realized, but existing.
Even now, the currently occupied region of UEPU had maintained 18 endorsements over an eight month history before the invasion. They were aware enough of the rampage raiders have left across fledgling Frontiers to have set up refuge for those victim to destruction, even while having been practically isolated in all respects from wider Gameplay. These are incredible feats that would not have been achievable for regionbuilders in years past, not without significant elbow grease and effort – but now, the endorsements diluted from Feeders are going into individual communities with actual vision, and they are being blotted out one by one.
What is my point? I’m arguing that these regions are potential being wasted. The true and unrealized impact of the Frontier Update was never what it could give to the established non-Feeder Gameplay community – it was how it could expand the scope of the Gameplay community. And that doesn’t just apply to R/D, which has been the only corner of Gameplay to even half seize this fact. There now exist dozens of regions alone that have communities either peripherally connected to Gameplay regions or populations that are completely isolated from Gameplay. The fact that regions like Europeia are not capitalizing on these opportunities, despite having made their name off of the promotion of and partnership with fellow small UCRs in the past and lending time and energy to cultivate allies not just among the greatest of regions but also the communities with most potential, is a major shortcoming for Gameplay.
Small, individual regions, often wrought not from established gameplayers but relatively new, green and bright-eyed players have always been the seeds of potential for NationStates. It is from regions just like the many Frontiers that exist now where diversity and metamorphosis were first born in past eras, and the only thing barring regionbuilders from setting down more roots were the barriers that faced any prospective community – tough recruitment, competitive environments, and a cold world that yielded little energy. These are bars significantly lowered in the face of Frontiers. This is by no means a call to overhaul the way foreign affairs works in any region, but there are some facts that need to be addressed.
Europeia is a region at war. However, it alone can not prove itself to be a leader in a conflict that is tilted heavily against their favor where it matters – in the battlefield. Lines have been drawn in the sand, and while there still exist important grey zones in the interregional diplomatic space for maneuvering and politicking, there exist entire horizons – frontiers, if you will – that go untapped. These are potential allies in arms, who have no reason to do anything but oppose raiders and what they stand for because they are the prime targets of the invader menace. These are communities that can learn from our own, with the foundations and skeletons of political systems, but without the energy or institutional history to grow them quite yet. These are players that can become fresh faces in our own region, who are no longer lost in the hubbub and cacophony of feeder RMBs but instead gameplayers who, more likely than before, are out to prove themselves and show real aptitude for the kind of innovation, passion, and dedication that regions like Europeia have relied on in our storied past and will need to journey forward into our next great odyssey.
In turn, any actual actionable progress would be simple and even convenient for anyone who would actually want to act on it – outreach is as simple as popping in and talking to regional communities on RMBs or Discords, a task that any player or ambassador can handle, to let them know that a big region like Europeia exists and knows they exist too, while giving them something to shoot for. These are regions that can learn a lot from Europeia – from simple foundations like recruitment and WA development to political institutions, World Assembly involvement, and military gameplay, Europeians can have an important hand in helping new Frontiers flourish – and the returns could be invaluable.
We were right years ago when we said the Frontier Update would shake the world, but these past few months are only the foreshocks for what can come. By no means are these foundling Frontiers the start of a new order that will push out the old, but if prospective regions looped into wider Gameplay like Carcassonne or the Wellspring are any indication, there is incredible untapped potential in these budding communities that have the power to nudge the needle of history’s compass. If Europeia leads the Gameplay world in bringing in and helping out these communities, we stand to help lead a new era of players that can define the generation they are born into.
