What if we tackled the problem from multiple fronts; first we have to decide where the biggest pool of NMR/CD's are. I think it would be agreeable to group them as:
-New Players disregarding the impact of NMR/CD
-New Players losing interest
-Regular Players missing the phase

Now this doesn't account for every possible NMR But it is a majority.

In regards to new players who make mistakes this may be the hardest to find a solution too however I think a possible additive to the sign-up process should be a tutorial which explains the game mechanics and also how an NMR/CD negatively impacts the game for others and results in a penalty preventing future play. This alone should stop a decent amount of NMRs as I can imagine many are just new players who are used to "rage quitting" in other online games or dropping out when they don't have time.

In regards to the new players who simply lose interest a simple cool down period of say 2 completed game or 2 weeks whichever comes first should be implemented meaning new players can only join 2 games and must either complete both or play beyond the 2 weeks before they can join as many games as they can afford.

The final is a bit harder to figure out, regular players missing phases happens often and I think probably accounts for the majority of NMRs that happen to other regular players. This could be tackled with a WFO function that effectively pauses the game until either the player returns and enters orders; or a half phase time has passed. Once the half phase has passed the player will become CD and the remaining players can vote to proceed with the game or to wait for a replacement.

I am on board with mentoring, and I would volunteer my time as a mentor.

I have evidence that it works and that I would do it: I have a personal league of players who I mentor to one degree or another, nearly all of whom had not played Diplomacy until I invited them to play in the league. It's been going for about about 7 months, and I strongly think that playing together in the same group has made a big difference in keeping the players committed to the game. I also think that my having created some noob-friendly resources helped. I also offered to teach some players the rules personally, which usually involved a 1-2 phone conversation.

The drop-out rate is at about 50%, and of the 50% dropouts maybe half gave up and CD'd in the first game and about half played a game or two and lost interest.

Adding chaos diplomacy would solve a lot of problems with this site I think.

NMR’s suck universally. As a person who’s played a lot on a site that offers a WFO-ish option I can tell you it’s not really a silver bullet, but I guess it’s not bad to have. The ‘ambassador’ and ‘reliability rating’ options for games is also kind of nice in upping the quality of games.

The problem ultimately though is, new players do tend to NMR or surrendering a lot and we need to find a way to deal with this. By making games exclusive you end up with all the new guys stuck playing with low quality games which leads to frustration and high turnover of new players leaving the site. Tutorials are fine but not scalable I don’t think. WFO does get annoying after the third or fourth delay.

Honestly I kind of appreciated the old PPC games because it was an easy casual way for new players to dip their toes into the game in a manner that was easier for people to achieve some sort of win condition that satisfied then and a lot of system gamers perfectly fine with NMRs because they were content to walk away with a handful more webdip points they they walked in with. All the GR people where happy because it kept these people out of their ‘serious’ games and didn’t really skew the ratings that much. It kinda worked.

@VI - that is not allowed here. We mustn’t talk of PPSC.

Or some alternative fluff game to keep the new guys content but in the shallow end of the pool. It really is a simple effective system, nobody wants to go play ‘unranked’ games.

Bringing back PPSC sounds like a great idea to me. I doubt I would ever touch that scoring method again, but I remember when I was starting out here, PPSC was the best way to grind points so that you could buy into the higher-pot WTA games where the better players were.

The "old" system with PPSC, back in the early 2010s, still had NMR issues aplenty. When it comes to Diplomacy online, I think part of it is inevitable. The games are just so *long* compared to what else you can do for entertainment. It gets closer to work than fun, at least for me. But the one group of games that has always avoided NMR issues is high-stakes games -- even though they're "just" Internet points or whatever, they still matter enough that people follow through with their commitment to the game much more reliably.
The old system also had low-bet PPSC games where you could grind points to earn your way into the high-stakes games.

Combined with some of the suggestions from DO and others in here, I think bringing back PPSC could be good for the site.

NMRs/CDs are absolutely the biggest challenge of every Diplomacy site out there and each has their own way of trying to tackle it. We should absolutely be cherry picking from the best of these ideas to improve things here. We’re great with forum organized games, pause/cancel options, admin intervention on request, reliability rating, and as mentioned while we had it PPSC kept many new players in the shallow end. PlayDip succeeds with their “Protected” games option (WFO), first round NMR protection (game restarts if nmr in spring 1901), “ambassador” status games (similar to reliability), confirmation to start and double period first round (less risk of somebody missing the start), and optionss to not process on weekends or certain holidays. I’m sure vDip has their own spin on things too.

No shame in taking a good idea of somebody else and building off it.

Is it possible for taking over CD’s to have no effect on GR. I use to take over a lot of hopeless positions just to help move the games along and my GR just got much worse. I didn’t mind much until I noticed that some players aren’t allowed to join game if their GR isn’t good.

I should point out that WFO used to be an available option at game create. It was disabled because it caused far, far more problems than in solved.

So for WFO, there are options they just aren't particularly easy from a developmental standpoint. For example, imagine that a player is about to NMR for their first time in a game. The game's phase is 48 hours long. The site will then wait up to 48 hours for that player to enter orders. Each player gets 1-3 of these per game (game creation option?). If they are about the NMR again after using up these PreventNMR tokens the site automatically CD's them from the game where they cannot rejoin it and resets the phase length giving the other players time to find a replacement. This has the benefit of not requiring mod intervention since it really can't be abused. Each time a player uses this NMR grace period a NMR would be recorded to their profile.

Another option is like vDip having a strict NMR policy as an option in games, the first NMR CD's you and allows the other players to find replacements.

Personally I like the first option more, it would just take more development work that I personally haven't had the time for.

And if this is something the mods are interested in, I can begin pulling stats up on which player groups are most likely to CD.

I don't think we should spend much time measuring ourselves to the face to face community (or, more accurately, communities). It is a very different game with different goals, where solos are pretty much unobtainable because of time constraints and the small pools of players and lack of anonymity make metagaming a part of its fabric. We use the same board (sometimes) but it's really apples and oranges.

I don't think experienced players play less because of GR. It's more just a natural progression as the initial enthusiasm wears off and changing lifestyle reduces opportunities to play. There may be a reluctance to take over CDs because of GR, but I doubt it's more than that.

I think it's worth taking a moment to consider what we've lost over the years. The game stats used to be a useful record that allowed people to measure their performance against others, and the CDs, NMRs and reliability data was an incentive not to get them. Since 1v1s became popular the stats have lost all relevance, and as such have lost a lot of their ability to influence.

We also have a points system that we bash on a regular basis, and a hidden away GR system that we also bash on a regular basis, at least when we bother to update it. We don't really have regular tournaments anymore, and the leagues died a death years ago.

What we need is to give our members something to work for. Some sort of measure of performance that has the proper backing of the site, where it is clear that if we do well in it we will rewarded with qualification to tournaments, high level games etc.

There are some good ideas on this thread. I also want to give a nod to DemonOverlord for initiating this discussion. I don't have a lot to add at the moment as I'm mulling all this over but I do want to say I support having this discussion.

I do eagerly await the day when the political threads are banished to their own little corner of Hell. Please please please this can't come soon enough.

"Since 1v1s became popular the stats have lost all relevance, and as such have lost a lot of their ability to influence."

Perhaps the stats could be separated into categories?

1v1. Classic, Ancient Med, etc

Not sure how feasible this is coding wise.

I wondered what had changed about this site since I came back with regards to the point. PPSC is gone. It's a shame because that points system was a way to grind points more easily to get into the bigger games. I hadn't realized how hated it actually is.

As for the political discussions on the forum, I don't see any issues. I think it's pretty futile to try to sanitize discussions on an internet forum. Language on here is already heavily moderated and the discussions themselves are really entertaining.

1v1, though fun, involves no diplomacy and should not be integrated into stats, i agree.

I think the idea of gathering data on the types of players who more frequently NMR is appropriate and necessary. We can all agree that NMR's are a huge problem, but finding where the problem occurs most can better direct the kinds of changes needed to help address it. Acknowledging the problem and working towards a solution is great, though. And to echo grumbledook, thanks go to DO for starting one of the better threads I've read.

I really think a lot of the issues the site has come down to it looking old. People don't want to join because it's looked the same since Myspace was around, it's not modern looking. Sure, it has some decent players, but who's gonna look at this place and get excited about it.

Better aesthetics -> more signups -> more players -> higher quality of games.

As far as NMR goes, that's a big reason I stopped playing. I used to be prolific in live games, and I haven't played one in forever because CD got out of hand. I know a lot of others used to play a lot of live games too play less now because of it (guys like Strauss, MichiganMan, etc).

I always thought the vDip NMR handling was good. It extended the phase if someone was going to NMR and gave them some time. A lot of my NMR would be from getting busy and forgetting to enter orders until a few hours too late.

And perhaps an automated punting system for players who NMR past a certain limit. Standards are a good thing.

What about banning players whose NMR stats are atrocious?

This would be for the worst offenders, obviously.

There is a list of people that seem interested in signing up as mentors and there is an even longer list of people that I'm sure would be willing to do so. Is there anyone that would actually be willing to head the project? It would be a fairly massive undertaking but it would be a very beneficial one if it worked out.

If someone ran the front end I’d hallily run the back end and keep records.

*gladly

I can set it up if you do all the matching CB

Thanks for starting this discussion DO; it's refreshing.

I have lots of comments and observations to make but, to keep things brief, I'll stick to bullet points. I'll be happy to expand on any if requested.

- The NMR curse can only be tackled by understanding who NMR's & why.
- Real life affects everyone but is best dealt with by in-game communication and cooperation.
- I think other main causes of NMRs are probably;
i) frustration at early set-backs,
ii) misunderstanding of the game mechanics and
iii) a lack of appreciation of the commitment required for a long game, especially for those of more than 24hr phase length.
- These affect newer or less committed players the most.
- Some kind of mentoring situation would help as might limiting the number of games people can initially enter (as I believe PlayDip do).
-What brings the Forum down are the personal attacks; if the respect levels increase then so does the quality of the Forum and the sense of community. These will make WebDip a more attractive place for new players.
- I often visited the site (then phpDip) as a guest before joining; what I was reading on the Forum put me off.
- This is a games website first and foremost so always keep the game at the centre.
- Consider making all public games anonymous. It adds to the fun and sense of adventure.
- Discovering you have cooperatively worked with some who's forum posts you've disagreed with is a humbling and learning experience and will help increase respect.
- Create clear Forum areas for non-game related topics (like Redscape & other do); enter at your own risk!
- Zero-tolerance of abuse should be the norm - not curbing freedom of speech but enforcing minimum standards of expression.
- Enforcement means a progressive set of bans, to give folks a chance to learn. I was delighted to see Jamiet welcomed back this week; rehabilitation is better than ostracism and giving people space to think their own way through an issue is the way to go.
- Better graphics etc. would be nice but not essential.

Further thoughts:

- Game creators should use Reliability Rating more to help filter players for more consistent games.
- If higher stakes make for better games, make all public games 'Fixed Odds' (i.e. the stake is automatically set at 20% of the creator's total DipPoints). Only players that can match the stake can play in that game.
- This would potentially limit the number of games that any individual was in at one time, hopefully increasing reliability as well as making the variety of players more diverse.
- It would protect better players from being frustrated by newbies without preventing newbies from playing with and learning from the better players.

Just thought of another.

DiplomaticCorps (a GM officiated PBEM site) has 'The Light Brigade'; a register of players willing to take over CD's.

Open positions are offered on their forum but I think players can also be approached by GMs if they are on the list.

Could we do something similar?

Willing volunteers could set the terms that they would accept (e.g. they might not want to take over a game with less than 24 hr phases) and agree to pick up open positions on request.

Obviously this would have to be Mod controlled and volunteers would have to have the final say on their availability capacity. The only rule is that they can't reject the position just based on viability or other players; it would be offered to them blind of position or personnel.