Personally I hate them. The worst part about playing online diplomacy is players who constantly NMR or refuse to use the "ready" button. By setting a game to anonymous you cannot identify which players are responsible. These players can then feel free to engage in this kind of selfish and unsporting behavior with impunity.

OK thanks for your reply. I didn't realise people do that. I guess when I play a game I don't go that deep into it and check out people's backgrounds but it makes sense that other people may do that.

Readying is not selfish or unsporting. Everyone has the right to use all the time they're allowed. If you sign up for a 2day/phase game, don't expect them to go faster than that.

I'm playing some larger games that are delayed every phase and cannot tell which countries are causing the delays.

And there's no reason you should. They're well within their rights. Stop whining about them.

You're probably right. If I join a long phase game then that is probably part of the deal. I may be in the minority opinion here.

Duplo, i often enter preliminary moves and don’t ready. Then I engage in diplomacy. This way I never nmr if I don’t hear back from someone I’m negotiating with. Or if I get too busy to get back to it. I only ready when all my diplomacy is done.

While I personally prefer non-anon games as I like to get to know people on the site, anon definitely has it's purpose. Alex pointed out a good one. Head hunting the good players (or ganging up on the poor players) can be a real thing. Anon mostly keeps that away unless you manage to figure out who someone is from how they write. And even then, you're not supposed to disseminate that information during anon games.

Beyond that, define "delay". If you're talking about taking the entire phase length, by not "readying" orders, that's perfectly acceptable, and is what you signed up for by playing that phase length game. If you're talking about NMRing and not entering orders....that's a different story. I too would like to know who the people are who are NMRing in games, but it's always something you can check after the game if you just make a note of what powers are NMRing and check the player name afterwards.

Of course, that doesn't help if you play future anon games with them and don't know an unreliable player is in the game. But that's the trade off I guess.

I'm pretty sure that in an Anon game that you cannot identify who NMRs and that information remains hidden forever. When it happens you just get a message from the moderators saying "this current phase has been delayed and extended due to one or more players not entering moves" and you never get to find out who they are.

You guys have mostly convinced me anyway. I agree that when you sign up for a game you cannot complain about the phase length. I still think it is bad form to use deliberate stalling tactics in any sport or game if that is what someone is doing. I acknowledge that somebody is well within their rights to take 48 hours to decide that they really do want to retreat that one unit of theirs from Galicia to Warsaw but in real life practical terms I cannot think of any reasons why anyone would do that. I understand sometimes people have real life issues like medical emergencies, power outage etc. but surely that is not happening to them every single phase.

In busy weeks I (and others) might even just save obvious retreats not because I need time to think about that specific move or to tire opponents, but to avoid having to handle too many of the more time consuming diplomacy phases. It might also be, that I need that slow down a lot at certain times, so I have to use up the phase timer's possibilities as often as possible. If you do not want to wait that long, please, just join games with shorter phases.

I think it would be a big improvement for vDip to allow for different deadlines for major phases (Spring Diplomacy and Autumn Diplomacy) and for minor phases (Spring Retreats, Autumn Retreats, and Autumn Builds). For instance, a game might be set up with 48 hour deadlines for major phases and 24 hour deadlines for minor phases. Many of the sites I've played on in the past had this feature, and it worked well.

As for the personal preferences of individual players, they should set up and/or join games with the deadline structure they prefer, just like all other rules.

Sure KoS! I also asked about it when i joined vdip and it just ignored. I came from the pbem community where, in the judges, the default was 72-24-72-24-24, for press games.

@CCR - Yes, that's the same community I came from, too.

I use the Anonymous setting to cut way down on headhunting, for whatever the reason (grudge, points, and especially if you have player carryover from game to game). Players that have formed successful alliances or have made terrible enemies in previous games are more inclined to do the same things over and over again when they have built up a relationship with another player(s), even if they are supposed to treat all players in each new game uniquely. This can create built-in advantages/disadvantages from before the first phase of the game has even been played that have been brought over from previous play. Playing Anonymous also gives players the option to fake an identity/playing style/other player... setting up less predictable and more strategic gameplay when the same or most of the same players are playing more than one game together. And whether with same or all new players, playing Anonymous helps keep things fresh and exciting. At the end of the game, identities are revealed, so it's still possible to build relationships with other players (though yes, the one drawback is, this does make it less easy to do so).

And +1 KOS. It would be nice to have the option to have shorter deadlines for Builds and Retreats. Although the phase-length change within the game will no doubt throw the rhythm of the game off for some and lead to a few NMRs, it would be nice to have for games between highly dedicated players where it would help games move faster. Note that you can play Rulebook Press, which achieves similar ends, but eliminates diplomacy altogether on Builds and Retreats.