Just one question for clarification. Why is there a bonus if you have many active games? Usually people do not play very well if they join more games as they can play. So a system that improves the rating of people that have problems with entering orders by joining even more games does not look to ideal to me.

We were trying last night about how to "reward" people for taking over CDs as kaner was afraid more games would go into CD is we removed the bonus. The third part of equation related to the active games was his suggestion about this. Some of us feel that joining CDs doesn't prove one to be reliable and I think it's why coming up with a tie-in from CD takeover to the reliability formula is difficult.

Maybe instead of counting the active games allow to "ballance" some part of your rating. So additionally to the 4*CD-ratio subtract 5-10% per CD that can actively improved by taking open positions. Or if this sound too much subtract 2*CD/games played + 5 * unbalanced CDs.

That's a good idea.

I think maybe having a double RR system might work? Keep the current one, which you can boost by taking over CDs, and prevent people who have a low rating in this from joining many games. This will provide a reason for people to take over CDs (as it does now).

Also have a second RR type, which counts CDs and NMRs and does not allow you to balance them, but does not change the number of games you are allowed to join.

Forcing nations to takeover two games for every one that they screwed up does provide incentive to. It's the one to one ratio that removes it. Of course if really you want to provide incentive to players taking over positions in CD, then removing any rankings penalties associated with the very probably negative results would help a great deal.

I realize that 90% of you will disregard this, because you already know everything, and don't need suggestions or other perspectives (even though this thread initiated by the site's caretaker specifically asked for them). However, when I got started in on-line Dip (I had played FTF for years beforehand), I didn't know many players in the community, and found getting into the really good games difficult. So I took the games that I could get into, which were overwhelmingly mercy/replacement positions, and I made the most of them. Three very positive results came from this: 1) I had a lot of fun, specifically playing without any pressure to win; 2) I made a reputation for myself as a reliable player, and someone willing to help out the community; and 3) I learned a lot about the game by playing extremely difficult and sometimes impossible positions. The experience and valuable perspective gained made me a much better player and helped my develop my overall play style.

The gist of this is to point out that playing CD positions shouldn't be seen as a punishment. We should all embrace the idea to help out, and the more we all do so, the more responsible and reliable players we will cultivate within the community. The reality is that the players who CD and ruin games and then think that being asked to help repair games on a two for one basis is too harsh are never going to take the game or this community seriously, and investing in them is a waste of time. Why not focus on capturing quality players who care about the community? Why are we so focused on not offending or scaring off people who do not give a rat's ass about the rest of us?

Maybe it would be helpful to limit the numbers of concurrent games based on t he games you CD, and leave make the RR independent of takeovers.
Setting a RR requirement is really not the norm during game-creation, so in reality having a sub-optimal RR does not limit your options that much and people that care about a good reputation have an easier time finding a suitable game.

I agree with RuffHaus. The spirit of the game is to prevent quality games from collapsing. I remember when I once took over a CD fought for a 3-way draw from a relatively bad position (I took over a 3 SC England in 1907 and managed to fight up to 11 SC and draw). The reward associated with filling in a CD should outweigh the "consequences" of a lost bet. For the good players, that shouldn't matter, as they normally bet 2-3 VDip points to join a no-casualty game. It's like a draw from a hat; it's random chance (the ability to salvage a position), and it's a boost to the community. No one wants an unfair solo, and helping out in preventing that makes the game better for everyone.

What about this ideas:
1. We remove the posibility to ballance CDs with takeovers from your RR
2. The calculation for the RR need to be adjusted to take these new unballanced CDs into account.
3. We do not punish people with a bad RR by limiting their posibility to join games. It will be just a filter at the gamecreation.
4. We make a separate stat. This limits how many games you can join together or something more (maybe Betsize too). (calculations to be formulated).
5. We could introduce some kind of medal for people with a high CD-takeover-stat.

I like these ideas (5 would be especially cool) - except for number for 4. Will there be a mechanism that allows for the amount of games limited to increase over time as a player becomes more reliable?

(also will the roll out of the new system start from scratch or will it take into account all the data present?)

What will this do to CDs already corrected by takeovers? Will this apply to old CDs or only future CDs?

Maybe as calculation for 4 we can just use the already used (CDs - takeovers) just in a separate context. A negative number means limitations. The more negative, the more limitations and maybe a medal for a 25+ there?

Or something similar.

Just throwing in some ideas. I see the problems with the current system, but we need a lot more ideas from everybody here. We have some opinions, but not that many ideas. It does not make sense to change anything if we have no additional ideas to discuss.

A bit more concrete (but still open for suggestions):

Assumptions:
1. Given that most games do not even have RR restrictions it's obvious that most players just do not care about the RR of their opponents. But if someone does care he has not the ability to limit the access to his games for people he do not want in his games because it's easy for everybody with enough games to get in the best possible reliability tier because CDs that can be ballanced are not really taken into account.

2. If we keep the current system of limiting the number of possible concurrent games based on the RR players have no way of removing their limitations on their own (CD-takeovers removed from the calculation). Because of that it's not possible to keep this limitation any longer.
But because most of the games do not care about RR at all there is no real incentive not to go into CD without some kind of penality.
So it might be a good idea to base penalities on a 2nd stat that monitors how many times a player went in CD that can be improved by taking open spots.

1. The calculation for the RR:
100 - (100 * (2 * NMRs) / Phases Played)) - (100 * (4 * CDs) / Games Played)

2 New stat for the CD-takeovers:
CD-takeovers - CDs

If the 2nd stat is <0 add some penalities, if it's >20 award some kind of medal.
Also for these stats we only track games with 3 or more people and no live games.

Disclaimer: this is all just a draft and open for discussion. Not a lot of players do actively participate in this thread, so I guess this is not really a problem for the site or even mildly interesting for most of the players. I do see the limitations of the current system, but if no one cares I'm not sure if I should put in the work to implement these changes.

I would focus on making it more dynamic instead of allowing people to do quick fixes.
If something happened longer ago, it counts less.

Oli,

More players than you think actually read the forum with interest. Every once in a while, a player writes to me about something that was written in the forum.

For example, I have followed with much attention the discussion of this thread.

Like I have said before, the RR as it is now is, in my opinion, totally useless.

Here are some stats that would obviously be usefull :

1° A permanent record of the past CDs. When you see that a player has had x CDs out of y games, that is a CLEAR statistic.

2° Like Mapu proposed it, a reliability rank calculated most simply by dividing the number of unmissed Phases by the number of played Phases. As many decimals as needed should be kept in order to clearly rank players. A tiebreak of phases completed would finally help rank players. Again, that is a CLEAR statistic.

For example :
Bozo has missed 0 Phases and played 5912 Phases, his reliability rank is 1.00000
Mapu has missed 0 Phases and played 2618 Phases, his reliability rank is 1.00000
And Bozo is ranked better than Mapu thanks to his higher number of played Phases.

A great advantage with such statistics is that a player does not have the ability to improve them artificially. The only way to make these statistics good is not not miss Phases and to not CD.


A CD causes a lot of damage to a game : we all agree about that.
However, when a player takes over a CDed nation it is not always a good thing. Some 20 or 40 years ago, when Diplomacy was played by mail, some Game Masters actually prohibited that a CDed nation was being played by a new player ! They indeed estimated that it could ruin even more the game !
For example, player A has an alliance was player B. They build their game together, which means that they trusted each other. They trusted the player, not the country.
Then, for example, player B CDs. That is of course terrible, we all agree about that.
But what if a new player takes over the CDed nation and then just stabs player A, just because it is possible ? Then, let's imagine that the new player simply CDs ! What is left of that game ?

Anyway, taking over a CDed country can be sometimes a good thing but I disagree that it is always a good thing.


On another note, I estimate that players play way too many games simultaneously to the point that they neglect some of their games and that they miss Phases. As a consequence, we should certainly keep the possibility to limit the number of games that a player could join. If a player has perfect stats (missed phases, CDs, etc.), then fine, he can join as many games as he wants. On the contrary, if a player has terrible stats (missed phases, CDs, etc.), then we should probably limit a little more the number of games that they are able to join.

I can imagine that people read this thread but doesn't write anything. (for instance I've followed this thread and there's plenty of ideas.) I agree that a CD record should be kept. And a CD is not always a good thing either.

I wouldn't mind having the record of CDs only current for 1 or 2 years, to allow some players a chance to prove themselves again.

I would like to combine the NMR and the CDs in one rating. And by CD I mean the real CD count, not anything balanced. Maybe make the RR half part missedPhased/phases played, half part CDs/totalGames. And it's no problem to make this more accurate. Eg. 95.65%.
Additionally displaying the total phases missed and total CDs are easy to add to a players profile.

I agree with the idea for a medal for people that take over CDed nations. I've taken over so many CDs, and it would feel better if instead of "well, this guy has no skill because he picks up other games", it was",man, that guy is dedicated to keeping games going and keeping everything equal.". this is just my 2 cents.

Not everybody appreciates takeovers though, do they?

What about removing the RR completely and make 3 new stats.
NMR-ratio and CD-ratio with a corresponding game creation-setting. And CDtakeovers that track the total CD takeovers.

Wouldn't that be a lot of work. I mean first the statistics and then the ability to filtrate so only repayable players may join?

That shouldn't be too much work for Oli actually.
Still though, can't thd age of the CD be taken into the equation? I think older CDs should be exponentially less important.
And while we all agree that CDing is bad, taking over a CD can be considered rather annoying, especially if it isn't done immediately, because the balance wouldn't be restored, it would just be destroyed a second time.

I quite like having a filter to use that is based on a player's reliability. When I make games I habitually make it so that it is RR 80+ and with a strict NMR policy.

1. So for an equation that reflects current reliability would it be possible to have some *if* functions in the equation?:
100 - (100 * (2 * NMRs <*if occurred under 2 years*>) / Phases Played)) - (100 * (4 * CDs <*if occurred under 2 years*>) / Games Played)

2. really like the idea to reward players with medals if they take CDd positions. I made up some medals for the vHoF a while back but it wouldn't be a problem to adapt them to this circumstance. http://www.vdiplomacy.com/wiki/index.php?title=HoF_symbols

I have an Idea for a way to balance a CD that proves your committed a CD will only become unbalanced if you play an a full press game with 7+ players that lasts past 5 years without missing a phase in that game. This would mean each unbalanced CD would take longer to fix and proves you have a commitment to this site.

The NMRs and CDs do not have a time-tag. So at the moment it's impossible to do this. Maybe I can reconstruct this information from the game-messages, but it's a lot more complex than changing a calculation or adding some stats.

In which case 3 new stats would be a good thing then:

1. NMR-ratio with a corresponding game creation-setting
2. CD-ratio with a corresponding game creation-setting.
3 CDtakeovers

If we start fresh it might be possible to do daily updates and make the old rating worth a bit less compared to the new data, so if you had 5 CDs yesterday but none today, the day without CDs influences the formula, making your rating maybe equal to 4.98 'fresh' CDs.

This way you don't actually need dates. If the rating is updated at a set time, you just have the old number changed a bit because of the new number.
It would become a rather complicated formula but should be possible...