webdiplomacy.net

Hey Guys

First up, I want to make it clear that this is not a whinge or bitch session - but its now been over a year since the RR changes were implemented and I was wondering if you had reviewed the results to see if what you set out to achieve has actually been achieved.

I'll give you my experience so far.

Old RR 98%
Current RR (under old scheme) 96%
Current RR 1 year on 55%

I make no excuses for my missed turns, except to say they were stupid mistakes in the main, some (early this year) prompted by RL stress items such as Hunger Games style work re-structures and so on - but the reason isn't the story here (other than regret for my own fuck ups).

Having said that - I am still paying the price for a miss in September last year.

My feedback is this: the cumulative impact of the long timers for expiration on these has become a real issue - driving down RR for an extended period of time. I've found myself thinking about A) Create a new account or B) just leave the site because I can't get a game. Neither are satisfactory solutions.

If this is the intended consequence - ignore and move on. If not maybe the solution would be to maintain the same penalties, but reduce the expiry timer to say 6 months?

Just sharing my thoughts - no criticising and interested to see if you are thinking of reviewing

Cheers

If I have understood it, a missed turn can stay on your record for up to a year.

It is the 13th September. Therefore if most of your "yearly missed turns" took place last September, they will soon be wiped from your record.

How long did a missed turn stay on your record under the old RR? I don't recall.

The old RR was a pure turns/missed turns % (correct me if I am wrong) dev team.

It is the length of time it stays on your record that I am questioning, but also a general interest in the delta in missed turns overall since the change. Have the mods/devs captured this at all to gauge the impact or success of the changes on behavior?

I am experiencing the same boat as you Wusti. I also make no excuses for my missed turned. I took on too many games at the same time and then life became unexpectedly busy, I shouldn't have joined as many games as I did.

I'm happy to take a couple months break to regain some RR from last year but given that my RR is 51% I might have to wait until mid next year to get a high enough RR to play quality games.

I would much rather a 6 month expiry timer. It would still punish me for missing moves but it would still allow me to get back into good games by the end of the year.

JRoz wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:08 am

I am experiencing the same boat as you Wusti.

Lol I should really should have previewed and edited my post before I pressed submit!

@JRoz @Wusti:

I would happily play in a game with you to help you regain some of your missing RR, if you'd be interested?

Thanks for the offer Jamie - but playing more games doesn't affect it at all - only time.

Happy to play you guys any time though!

A little disappointed we haven't heard anything at all from the mod/dev team to be honest.

I also think the times for the new RR are too long.

Chaqa wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 14, 2021 9:34 pm

I also think the times for the new RR are too long.

I'm barely here anymore, but since Chaqa said it I agree. Justice for Wusti's RR!

I do find it odd that even one of the bots has a RR below 50.
https://webdiplomacy.net/userprofile.php?userID=108982

MerryBBuck wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 15, 2021 1:22 pm

I do find it odd that even one of the bots has a RR below 50.
https://webdiplomacy.net/userprofile.php?userID=108982

That's weird. Why would a bot NMR?

As someone who plays a few games at a time once every few years... I'm not the same sinner I once was and I am thankful for forgiveness.

@Jamiet99uk I'm keen to join a game if we can get enough people.

Would be very nice if a mod could reply to us!

Using excused missed turns has minimal penalty and is recovered quickly. What you seem to be complaining about is the length of time you're penalised for Civil Disorders. Yet, those have massive impacts on the game and really should be penalized heavily. Anything less than one year is too short; it's just not enough time to have believably changed in your relation to time management and care for the game.

If anything could change, however, it would be to allow for more than 4 excused missed turns in game creation. People who prefer the safety net and are fine with the delays can join those with more, and those who aren't can avoid it. (That said, it could be worth penalising using excused missed turns more as well, to make using them more of a trade-off.)

Peregrine Falcon wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:20 pm

Using excused missed turns has minimal penalty and is recovered quickly. What you seem to be complaining about is the length of time you're penalised for Civil Disorders. Yet, those have massive impacts on the game and really should be penalized heavily. Anything less than one year is too short; it's just not enough time to have believably changed in your relation to time management and care for the game.

If anything could change, however, it would be to allow for more than 4 excused missed turns in game creation. People who prefer the safety net and are fine with the delays can join those with more, and those who aren't can avoid it. (That said, it could be worth penalising using excused missed turns more as well, to make using them more of a trade-off.)

I respectfully disagree, and would lean towards an evidence based model. We have implemented change with no reporting on the impact of that change. I think we really need to see the evidence of exactly what has changed.

I have been playing on this site for 10 years with 480 games and 13 CDs in that time - a 97.3% reliability. It just so happens that half of those have happened within the last 12 months due to extraneous circumstances and a couple of genuine screw-ups.

Inserting more excused turns will just destroy some variants (4 missed turns in chaos or World? holy christ no!) and implies a frequency the site should not encourage.

Frankly, I don't think there is much wrong with the current system of penalties other than the expiry period of the timers, which are debilitating and could encourage poor behaviours (which I listed in my initial post such as secondary accounts to wait out the timer).

Having said that, can the mods/admins please publish the impacts of the new system on behaviour to inform such a discussion.

Hey Mod/Dev team - do you actually have any data regarding behavioural changes from the new RR system?

Peregrine Falcon wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:20 pm

Using excused missed turns has minimal penalty and is recovered quickly. What you seem to be complaining about is the length of time you're penalised for Civil Disorders. Yet, those have massive impacts on the game and really should be penalized heavily. Anything less than one year is too short; it's just not enough time to have believably changed in your relation to time management and care for the game.

If anything could change, however, it would be to allow for more than 4 excused missed turns in game creation. People who prefer the safety net and are fine with the delays can join those with more, and those who aren't can avoid it. (That said, it could be worth penalising using excused missed turns more as well, to make using them more of a trade-off.)

Nah, I vehemently disagree that one year isn't long enough. A lot of time civil disorders come because of temporary/short-term life issues. Most of mine come from periods of a few days when work was crazy, or I was sick, or otherwise just not near a computer.

A lot of us have things that wind up taking precedence over Diplomacy sometimes.

Yep, I agree with Wusti and Chaquito. Sometimes when you are flying to foreign countries, and the experience takes over 24 hours...sometimes,... and you are running through airports between flights...no time for diplomacy. And then you are screwed. My rating dropped too. sometimes life gets demanding.

on the other hand, I like playing with newbies.

Most of the CDs on this site (if my experience is any guide) come from new or like-new accounts with little history. Given the constant churn of accounts, I am guessing that some significant number of these players simply CD when their game(s) aren't going the way they want and re-register under a different username; the others will quit the site entirely. Regardless, a hefty RR penalty does nothing to deter these types of CDs. In fact, if the penalty is too high it might actually encourage CDs to the extent that it encourages players to relentlessly churn accounts (and although that is against the rules, we all know this happens) rather than simply stick with one account.

I think one year is a little too punitive, although clearly it is having some effect on some individuals if it is resulting in the complaints in this thread. The only problem is that, rather than incentivizing reliability, I suspect it disincentivizes rule-following as stated above.

The fact that forums and other types of community across all diplomacy sites (and the web more broadly) are largely in decline means that people have little incentive to stick around and build up a reputation or brand compared to 10 years ago, which also complicates things. I am guessing if there was some affirmative reason for new players to want to keep only one account they would take reliability more seriously, but without that reason there is near zero cost to just CDing and moving along.