Every time I tell myself I am taking a break, I find myself searching new games since I am waiting to complete a couple active games. Most times I end up finding one or two that interest me (or I see someone I want to play against signed up) and the site keeps reeling my in. There was a short time where I noticed a few games being interrupted due to "cheating". But I think meta-gaming was the culprit more than multi-accounts. And that was months ago. I have to admit, I get more excited about a game when I see names I recognize. And I have never had a problem where someone tried to exact revenge from a previous game. Actually, in most games the press is more rough banter about him kicking my butt, me putting a hurt on them, or it was a pleasure working with you by the end of the game... I have not seen as many NMRs in the games lately though. Especially the larger ones I have been involved in. That's a good sign. I can't say some haven't given up when they were stabbed and were obviously about to be annihilated. But I'm talking more about the ones where they just don't start the game they signed up for, and one or two powers get a really easy head start because of it. Like the "cheating", it was an issue for a short time, but that seemed to have cleared up as well. I agree that we need to self regulate ourselves. I've done it in games with new people. I always point out about meta-gaming when someone makes a comment that is related to it. I'm not going to report it to admin unless they argue the point or continually do it though. My ranking has been falling consistently because I keep joining these huge maps and can't seem to catch a break in picking my partners. But that is my fault, I don't blame the site for that. Y'all (oops the southern in me is coming out) are more involved in the technical sides of it. I'm one who joined simply to enjoy the strategy and the relationships. I don't pay much attention to the numbers. I bet there are a lot of new people who feel the same...

Hi there.
One of the things I find a bit annoying is that non-active players stay high up in the V-Hall of Fame forever, just because they were once great players. Not that my ultimate goal is to be #1 on the hitlist, but for some of the players a Hall of Fame is a good motivation to play again and again. If the list is cluttered with old players that can be discouraging.
So why don't we add a time penalty to the V-points people have? For example we could deduct 1% of everyone's score every month. That doesn't change to order of the list, but if you don't play for a year, and others keep playing, you lose around 10% of your score. If you were at 2000 , you will still be high up on the list, and you can easily rejoin games an still be at the top. But if you stay away for 5 years or so, your score will have seriously dropped, which I think is fair, giving a better chance for new and active players to get to the top of the list.

Has anyone have any ideas about this?

I think some variation of that would be good.

I recommended a similar thing two pages up. Except, I suggested that the penalty would affect inactive players only.

just one thing to add, when i first joined, i was literally plunged into deep water, not knowing exactly what to do, how to negotiate and stuff. Heck, I didnt even know what the supports did! 3 years later, I guess i made some progress, I'm more analytical, more diplomatic but I can empathise with the many new players who join and the struggles they face

Looking back, it would have been nice for a more experienced player to be able to go over games with me when I had done, helped see what i could have improved on.

Another interesting aspect to consider would be opening up the country- to-country chats once the game is finished. Right now, one is only able to see the map orders, but these only tell half the story of a succesful win a player may try and learn from. After all, it is how the various players have negotiated with the rest to be in the postion, and this is something new players may struggle with.

anyone else has thoughts on this?

Great suggestions Hypoguy/Devonian and Jack.

I would only consider the public country chats as a game setup option. What I say privately to abother player stays in private so if it is a game *option* I can simply not join games with that option on. If it became standard in all full press, I would stop playing.

We're not going to release private press from any game unless all players want everything released (and probably not even then, since it's not easy to get hold of all of it in a well-ordered document). This is a discussion that happened over at webDiplomacy as well, and many players said that they would prefer their press to remain private, since releasing all press gives a lot away about the playstyle of players and lets other players counter it by reading up on past games.

If you really want everything released after a game, you could run a 'Full Disclosure' Special Rules Game where all players agree before the game starts that the full transcripts will be released afterwards.

Thanks Cap. I thought I remembe red that discussion in the past. I was one of those who was against it.

I'm not keen on Hypoguy's idea per se, though I do think a variation on the theme on it would be good, if it were possible. Effectively we need two Halls of Fame, the existing one which takes no notice of whether you've played recently or not = the All-Time Hall of Fame. BUT there also needs to be a Current Hall of Fame that shows only the players who are: still playing, on a waitlist, or have finished a game in the last year, For obvious reasons all games remain valid (impossible nightmare of dynamically recalculating figures and players resurfacing etc!).

I absolutely agree with the Captain's comments on private press. There are other reasons to dislike it besides those stated!!!

Finally, I still think, a la Jack's comments, that there is scope for a 'buddy' system, where new players can be given the name of someone who is prepared to advise and help when requested. I see the mentor as being someone who helps, rather than being an 'authority'.

Finally, I play in vDip because I like and ply variants like Rinascimento, where if you draw the wrong power your chances of survival are not great!! However, they ply a lot better under PPSC than they do WTA... but frankly I'd play them anyway, however much they tanked my rating!

Yeah, imagine the embarrassment if noobs could read the press of experienced players and realised how clueless everyone still was after years of playing. That would be a disaster!

To all new players: Diplomacy is a serious game that demands rigorous study and a keen intellect. Success in diplomacy is 90% perspiration and 10%... erm... sedulousness!

There, that sounded convincing. I think we got away with it!

I had to look that one up. You could have just said "diligence".

Personally, I think it requires about 20% remorselessness.

Tis 100% winging it, truth be told

Huh, and here I was thinking it was 100% dumb luck all this time.

The worst thing about releasing the private press would be having to read it again.

Why not just set up one game of high caliber players and post the full press as a special tutorial feature for newer players?

You just go ahead and set that up Gopher! I can't wait to read it.

My top three wishes for a better vDip experience:

1) Better mobile integration. That includes having touch-based interface to enter orders on the map itself. Heck, most variants don't even have a custom map interface for orders!

2) More variants. Okay, word is a new site focused on new variants is in development, but I still think that vDiplomacy's main strength would come from developing and testing variants, from the well-known as Milan to lesser played as Crusades.

3) Preference-based method of choosing a power. Random have its uses but you may end up playing a power you absolutely hate (and vice-versa; you might want to try out a specific power to improve on it but get another one), and First Come First Served has the obvious disadvantage of letting the latecomer(s) with absolutely no options. By ranking your favorite powers, everyone get a reasonable chance of playing as the power they want to play as. It's a win-win in every aspect. PlayDiplomacy do this if I remember well.

@ Enriador - I think you're overly optimistic! It's quite a lot of effort to get a variant to the no bug, playable stage as it is... as most games are at least a day a phase, surely you can arrange to get near a PC/browser in the time? I can see the attraction, but mobile interfaces are a swine to develop! e.g. Neptune's Pride!

Like the previous point, more variants rests on someone doing the leg work - designing them (I've got over 30 to my name) isn't difficult, but testing, getting play balance right and schlepping through the coding all take someone's unpaid time. But in essence I agree; particularly it would be brilliant if a widget could be found to allow Fog of War to be added as an option to another variant - vis AncMed/Fod of War ON would be a blast and brilliant for an RPG!

I agree with your 3rd point tho pick-your-country is an option already. My pet annoyance is how often you get the same damned country to play AGAIN - anyone for Persia??? It surely should be possible to ensure that doesn't happen....

But take a rare +1 from me for a cogent presentation

I think that the ELO version of the VDip hall of fame needs some correction. In chess after a number of games the K coefficient that multiplies the points (gained or lost) is lowered permitting to the player that plays a lot of game to be not penalized if he loose a game against a player with less points. The problem in VDip now is that a player with a high score when wins (or draws) gains very little points (or nothing) and when he looses looses a lot of points so he is not encouraged to play a lot of games expecially against low score players.
The score system is an impedement also to play some funny variants where some nations are unplayable in term of sopravvivence and victory, the score system creates also problems playing a non Anonymous game where the low score players team up against the higher score player.
I think the goal of the site shuold be encourages the players to play so there are only two solutions: modify the VDip score system for the Hall of Fame or eliminate it.

Well, we dove have unrated play and anonymous games to handle both of those situation, Maucat.

I would say that the win loss percentage should not be affected by unrated games. That's the one that annoys me. Unrated and Rin games are bound to result in changing win/loss/draw percentage and that is unfair.

We already have... Stupid autocorrect.

Play un unrated game isn't the same thing as playing arated game. I only ask a better system to rate the Hall of fame.

If I may add something, I think the penalty system for limiting the amount of games that can be joined is faulty. It does not take into account amount of games played, and it is obvious that a player's CDs and NMRs are likely to be higher the more games and phases played. Thus, imposing harsh limits of simultaneous games on players that do not take over other people's CD positions limits participation even more.

Kaug is right!

Just not enough people want to play this silly game. It seems to me that allowing CDers to enter a bunch of games means that more games will have CDs. That will not improve the site.

There's just not enough people that want to play.

@scuba: you have a similar RR and cd rate as I do. I am betting you can join a lot more games than me simultaneously right now. The reason is I have played three times as many games in this site as you. Is that allowing CDers to enter a bunch of games?

I have no idea. If the idea is to make the formula better, I think that is great. If the idea is to remove or lessen the penalty for missing turns and games, I don't support that. The good news is, whatever I support or do not support doesn't matter to anyone.

The formula was originally put in place like this to encourage even experienced players to pick up CDs for balance, but it ended up working too well and now there are no CDs to pick up most of the time.

I'll try to get Oli's attention about it but given how busy he is it might not be changed anytime soon.

DEVONIAN: "Perhaps, there should be some [rankings] penalty for inactivity. If players lost points for every month they did not participate in a game, they might join games just to maintain their position."

DR. RECOMMENDED: "Most of all, I would really like to see a “use-it-or-lose-it” component to the rankings. Players should be encouraged to play. Can we install a program that would determine whether a player is active or inactive (has been active in a game within previous 3 months, or 6 – just throwing numbers out there)? If a player becomes inactive, they lose ELO points over time. 5 per week? We could also split out a separate HoF page with players ranked by their all-time highest rating, and/or an active players ranking page, etc. Just looking for simple ways to give different people what they want. Ultimately though, it comes down to removing the disincentive for top players to join games with newer/lesser-ranked players."

The vDip HOF list is littered with frozen scores of players who no longer play here. Something needs to be done to clean this up. I like these ideas a lot. An Active Players HOF would be less preferable. On another point about ratings, I think you only hurt yourself if you're playing for ratings. Diplomacy is meant to be fun, and players shouldn't be passing up games, change their style of play, or making choices based on ratings. Ratings are a nice gauge of overall skill levels, but are by no means strictly accurate, invaluable, or what you should be working for here.

RUFFHAUS: "This is something that VDiplomacy lacks. The rules are loosey goosey about what is and what is not appropriate. For example, there is no specific rule about waging grudges or continuous alliances across games here. There is some lip service paid to it, but it's really not sufficiently explained that this behavior is improper."

The Etiquette page could definitely use an update.

DECIMA LEGIO: "I'm asking because I don't really know and I did not follow closely the website evolution in the last year: Who's in charge now? Is there an admin substituting Oli temporarily? Did Oli assign some of his functions to someone before missing from here? Who's the current mod team?"

That's a real roadblock to everything the community wants to do here. At the next checkpoint, is there anyway the Mods can be given the ability to do more than just troubleshoot?, I.e., implement new variants and add/change features.

ENRIADOR: "3) Preference-based method of choosing a power. Random have its uses but you may end up playing a power you absolutely hate (and vice-versa; you might want to try out a specific power to improve on it but get another one), and First Come First Served has the obvious disadvantage of letting the latecomer(s) with absolutely no options. By ranking your favorite powers, everyone get a reasonable chance of playing as the power they want to play as. It's a win-win in every aspect. PlayDiplomacy do this if I remember well."

Great idea, a little bit of Random and Choose Your Own really. I like it and it would make a nice option.

MAUCAT: "The score system is an impedement also to play some funny variants where some nations are unplayable in term of sopravvivence and victory, the score system creates also problems playing a non Anonymous game where the low score players team up against the higher score player."

Ratings for the "funny" or imbalanced variants, like Rinascimento, have taken this into account. Weaker powers get more for winning, and lose less for losing and vice versa than in balanced variants (somewhere in the Forum, Oli has explained this). I believe Chaos and Chaoctopi (and possibly other similar, craaazy variants) are exempted too. That said, playing any larger game will have a greater chance of having a larger effect on your rating than a smaller game, since there are more opponents to account for. And your second point is one of the reasons I almost always play Anonymous.

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH: "I would say that the win loss percentage should not be affected by unrated games. That's the one that annoys me."

Didn't realize that. That makes no sense. This should be an easy fix though.