As I understand it, you actually can only take over CD's in games if you meet the RR requirements. Still, this looks like a serious issue.

Yeah; I've no problem with the guys who make a serious attempt to fight for their adopted power's survival/growth, but allowing the lowlives who have already ruined games for other players being able to step in to wreck more games in order to recover their 'good standing' is monstrous

Report it to the Mod team. If it's a blatant conspiracy, they will find it. If it's something more difficult to prove, then maybe the scrutiny cause the behavior to stop. If nothing else you're calling attention to events that have been going on for years with little or no redress because the tools they have are limited. If enough players take the time to report these thing, perhaps the Mod Team will finally take into consideration the damaging effects of widespread cheating. I sympathize with your ruined game, but will note that you are by no means alone. Good luck.

I have done... the response:
"Not foul-play. The player in question appears to have taken over the position for a quick boost to their reliability rating.

Thank-you for bringing this to our attention non-the-less."

This has already been reported. Unfortunately there is no rules against suiciding in a game.

The real issue here though is whether or not it is better to have someone take over a player who has CDd or whether it would be better to not have a player take over a player who has CDd - bearing in mind that human nature is unpredictable and it is always better not to have a CD in the first place.

Tangential to this - would the community like an option to prevent players from taking over CDs in the game creation?

That latter would seem a good idea. I think that it would be best not to count the replacement player's involvement as counting against his RR unless it also counts against his rating; that would solve the problem I think.

I sort of agree with Chumbles. If he means "not count towards his RR" then it makes sense.

The problem I see is players who take over 1 or 2 SC positions get penalized when they are eliminated. I think there needs to be an automated decision to apply the rating adjustment based on size at takeover and end result. Take over a monster position and win or draw or a nearly dead and lose doesn't affect the rating. But take over a solid position and lose or a zombie spot and win or draw and you get the adjustment whichever way it goes.

Isn't that how it currently works with regards to how many points you bet and get back? I'm not sure how the discount works compared to the old webDip model of joining games in progress, but as far as I know it's still the same in principle.

Points aren't vRating. I couldn't give a flying rat for points but vRating is important.

I thought that a take over would award the same points win or lose as any other player. Your 're and ability to play more games is unrelated to points but just your RR.

@Strider: No you're talking about webDip points, YCHTT is talking about vDip points, the one next to your name, which I agree is much more important (like, I don't have any idea how much webDip points might be nor do I care, since all I know is there is enough). This is also why I'm now a bit wary at playing 1v1 with a pot, it has little effect on webDip points but I think a significant amount on vDip points (plus I seem to have became worse at it).

As soon as there is a reward, the action that grants it is perverted. Most players care very much about their various points : some of them even became wary about playing some variants because these would possibly have an impact on their points !

This points issue has taken so much much place that some players are willing to quit playing some variants or even to quit playing on this site just to keep their rating. Many players have been targetting high ranked players in order to eliminate them because it rewards more points than when a lower ranked player is eliminated. As a consequence, some high ranked players have stopped playing here because it became almost impossible for them to play without being systematically targetted. We should get rid of these *ego* points who make most players play for their "rating" (as if they had something to prove to themselves and to the others) rather than play for the game itself. That is a serious metagaming issue. As far as I am concerned, I have solved the problem very easily : I now play only unrated games and I invite those who claim that they do not care about their points to also boycott the points system and to join unrated games.

Another example of a reward perverting a good action is that silly reward of RR points given to a player who takes over a CD. I have always been opposed to that. Very often, when a player takes over a CD, he plays in a strange or a silly way, which sometimes causes more damage to the game than only the CD itself. When the RR system was created, I found it rather interesting : we had a value that meant something. But now that the RR points can be artificially raised, they mean much less than when they were created. The solution is simple : when a player takes over a CD, he should do it without any reward, which means that he pays his part of the pot (if there is one) and he gets NO reward by seeing a raise of his RR. In those conditions, it is true that players will less easily take over CDs, but at least, when one does, he will much more likely play the game seriously.

Maybe having the possibility of creating games with the option to prevent players from taking over CDs (like kaner406 proposed it yesterday) is a solution.

Of course, the only completely correct solution is to educate our fellow players so that they do not CD, but this is the internet, this is 2018 : some players will keep CDing.

tldr :
As a summary :
• When a player takes over a CD, he should not receive a raise of his RR : this is the main subject of this thread.
• When a player takes over a CD, he should pay his part of the pot.
• Let's please have the possibility of creating games with the option to prevent players from taking over CDs
• Let's get rid of the points system which perverts the game.
• Let's play seriously unrated games, each game being independant of any other one.

A problem can only be really solved by taking care of its causes, not by managing its consequences.

I am confused. As a member who had a number of NMRs, I had a game limit until recently, and I could take over CDs in order to reduce(raise?) the game limit. (Unfortunately for this conversation, I no longer have a Game limit so the explanatory page no longer contains the calculation.)

In all the CDs I have taken over, my RR has not increased by any amount other than the incremental increase I will always get from playing more phases (I have no CDs, so extra games do not help my RR). It only allowed me to play more games than would normally be allowed by my RR score.

Does this benefit in some way invalidate the RR as "a value that meant something" even though it doesn't effect the displayed value at all? Or did I misunderstand the game limit system altogether?

@Retillion

>some of them even became wary about playing some variants because these would possibly have an impact on their points

I will say that this might be a good part of the points system, but this is more of a philosophical question of whether vDip is not only for playing variants but also rating them. If people are hesitant to play variants because they have steep structural disadvantages for a certain territory, then that variant may be worse.

Other than that, I agree with everything else

"
As a summary :
• When a player takes over a CD, he should pay his part of the pot.
• Let's get rid of the points system which perverts the game.
"

Does not compute. Error. Error.

It computes if you consider the ratings pot and points which are two separate and distinct systems of measurement.

@Retillion: you've amplified my original point to include the joke of a ratings system. I'm in agreement with everything you say, though I only play unrated AND anon games...

My rating here varies between "Member" (as in organ?) and "Political Puppet" ... atm the organ: top 46%... On WebDip it's "Diplomat" top 4%... the difference is partly down to making the fundamental error of nearly dying from septic shock (twice) without arranging a stand in... I had no such problem on WebDip, because my 2 other visits to an ICU were bracketed by hospitalization where the main games were "Sass the nurse" and drink 2 litres of water late afternoon / evening so the overnight bag would explode!

Ratings systems are beloved of statistical devotees and egomaniacs... I still believe Calhamer Points (1 for a win, or a proportion of that divided by draw participants) is best ... statistical instruments always carry bias masquerading as the One True Measure.

And you are right Retillion, the ratings game IS a metagame... I used to play regularly play with a group of friends ... at the start I won 9/10 of the games ... by the end it became "Hunt the Chumbles" with all participants focused solely on this ... once they'd identified me, they destroyed me, with non-contiguous powers holding all units until I was gone, then everyone agreed the draw. The game was "Hunt the Chumbles" after all!

The explanation for the webDiplomacy states that “Points are what let experts play with other experts, and novices play with other novices, so that everyone is challenged to the right amount.”

It would be interesting to see a breakdown (yes, more statistics) on the correlation between time on this site (or number of games played) and CDs. Of course, dedicated players can get tied up with other things such as hospitalization, work and other crap that gets in the way but one would suspect that “seniority” begets fewers NMRs and CDs.

As I type this there are 11,376 registered players on vDiplomacy and 555 are listed as ‘Playing’, less than 5%. This site is Tumbleweed Town and we will always get people coming in to check things out and then leave, never coming back.

Perhaps the solution to get a “serious” game going is to set the pot to an appropriate level, a minimum RR rating and number of phases played. Unless stats prove me wrong we might paraphrase the first sentence: “Points, RR and MinPhases are what let experts play with other experts, and novices play with other novices, so that everyone is challenged to the right amount.”

@Chumbles: before I forget, congrats at being so good that your friends gang up on you. I can only wish this would happen to me.

*webDiplomacy points*

Grumble.

@gjdip: Thanks! It's a dubious privilege "...being so good that your friends gang up on you." Thecfact that I wanted them to enjoy Dip meant that I put myself forward as an honest guide AND actually was. *waggles eyebrows at the cynics and their mocking laughter* Trouble was that meant their play kept improving...

But it's lifelong, the Get Chumbles gang... from THE book

"Perhaps the most successful face-to-face player I have ever encountered is [Chumbles], a large, genial character renowned for his vast appetite, prodigious thirst and inexhaustible good nature, a man whom it is (unfortunately) quite impossible to mistrust. Many a struggling novice has been cheered by his friendly advice, comforted by his genuine concern when things failed to work out as predicted ... and eventually shattered by the clinical, apologetic insertion of the knife at the one moment when no defence or retaliation was possible. After one particularly callous betrayal he was physically assaulted by an enraged dwarf a quarter of his size, an event which upset him considerably. It is no mean tribute to his benevolent aspect that several victims come back for more in subsequent games (I have myself); I do not recall that he has ever lost a game I have watched or played in."

Published 40 years ago...

@kaner
You said "Unfortunately there is no rules against suiciding in a game."

Shouldnt there be a rule that obliged you to play to the best of your effort to maximize your own result?

"Shouldnt there be a rule that obliged you to play to the best of your effort to maximize your own result? "

How do you enforce that?

@vixol: that's a question of ethics (and perhaps playing style), not rules.

@vixol - Chainsaw/suicide diplomacy is a perfectly valid tactic especially in the short term to wake others up to a threat. You start throwing the game until they realize you will accept a loss to a solo rather than be cut out of the draw.

Yep. Sometimes it is rational and in your best interest to make others think that you are irrational and are not working for your best interest. Vixols rule would not be possible to enforce because you have no objective measure to distinguish between players who are not trying to maximize their own result, players who are just acting as if they aren't, and players who just aren't very bright.

Of course it's a rational ploy and equally an impossible task for a Mod to distinguish the motivation of a player. But you guys are missing the point a little - in gunboat games a guy recovering his RR dropping into a losing position has no incentive to do anything other than get dead ASAP.

IMO three things should be considered. Firstly, that the stand in puts their VRat and pro rata credit on the line in all games; secondly either that gunboat* games should be CD = dead, or that gunboat game proposals should explicitly allow or forbid CD stand ins, or lastly that CD stand ins should be banned. The game wasn't designed with that in mind ...

*In games where messaging is allowed the other people can at least try and persuade the kamikaze pilot to man up and fight on etc.

Many people in this thread seem to have some misconceptions. If you take over a CD position, you actually already do put your vRanking on the line, just not as much compared to when you would join the game from the beginning.

Really? I haven't looked at the code. Can we get a mod to verify this? If true, I won't be taking over hopeless CDs anymore.