A bit weird to solicit opinion from those who show a history of poor judgement...

Hey now, be nice :P

I apologize. I'll post some serious thoughts as well. Anyone can go into my history and see the multitude of PPSC games I myself played.

Every few months, I play a gunboat game, realize I'm close to winning, and think I've finally figured out gunboat. Then, I realize I accidentally joined a PPSC game. In all seriousness though, I think PPSC is an abomination, and it's one of the reasons I avoided WebDip during its earlier years.

I've actually never played with a scoring system that's not either PPSC or WTA, so at the very least, it would be interesting to try a center-based draw scoring system. It will change the dynamics throughout the game, as players will no longer have incentive to agree to a small part in a draw early in the game, and later in the game, players have to balance maximizing their scoring in a draw and making sure that nobody else wins. Rallying players to stop the leader would probably become more difficult.

It is an odd idea. The second place finish remains well rewarded. The plucky small power that forms a vital part of the draw is punished. The numpty who made his solo push far too early and is stopped before he even gets to 15 centres is rewarded with extra points in his draw. I'm struggling to see any positives, to be honest.

I don't like PPSC at all. But if you really wanted to go there, you should just make two more bastardized versions of scoring. We have:

1) WTA when there is a solo, evenly split points when there is a draw; and
2) PPSC when there is a solo, evenly split points when there is a draw.

You might as well make the other two then:
3) WTA when there is a solo, PPSC when there is a draw (ATC's suggestion); and
4) PPSC when there is a solo, PPSC when there is a draw.

As long as the default remains #1, then I am happy. Players can experiment with the other formats to their heart's content, though I tend to think that will just foster bad habits.

I don't play PPSC, but i also don't think we should grade draws.

The paychology of thegame already see players approaching a draw trying to eliminate others (their enemies) and 'reduce the size' of the draw. I think this makes achieving a solo easier - but i don't think i should be encouraged.

The game should be hard. An the aim is to solo.

A draw is necessary to avoid games becoming stale and players CDing, but in an ideal world every game should play until a solo OR a (majority) stalemate line is formed. (If a 15/16 centre stalemate line is formed, then you don't need to break it to win...)

Now in reality, a draw can be used as a temptation to risk things you shouldn't and gain trust of an ally as a tool to earn your solo. But encouraging players to kill people off for a draw would hurt the game imo.

Of course people can play whatever variant they wish. But offering this variant here would reduce my total available player pool. And further divide this community. (We have V dip for a reason)

All that said, i think a more interesting variant is one where an alliance declares joint victory when they have surpassed 18 centres.

This doesn't prolong a 'draw' to eliminate players who have done well enough to survive, but it is too easy to achieve and it is very difficult for any set of 5 players from preventing *any* group of two (or more) players from accumulating 18 centers or more... Still it could be fun.

For context - I believe most face-to-face Diplomacy tournaments have moved to centre-based draw scoring. Proponents of these systems like them because you get fewer 1903 "hey we can 3 way from here" deals (because the player who'd finish on 8 vs the two 13 centre powers in that deal usually has other ideas).

So, for the record, I no longer play PPSC. I won't comment on PPSC vs WTA; I'll just say WTA in a Solo situation is strictly preferable over a PPSC in a Solo situation.

The question here is Centre Number vs Player Number based drawing methods. I prefer the Player Number based drawing methods.

1) Rewards for being essential to the stalemate, no matter how small.
-If they are excisible, other players should have to prove it by actually excising them.
-Being essential obviously should be rewarded as any other essential member. There are not "more essential" powers in a draw (insert obligatory Animal Farm reference here)

2) Punishes those who can't close the deal
-If someone doesn't solo, they don't win and should be treated equally
-Due to the rules and the map, there are certain aspects of this game that make getting to 17 MUCH easier than getting to 18, sometimes the former is mathematically certain while the latter is impossible. Treating it as a monotonic gradient would be wrong
3) X points / N players, not only shown above to be philosophically fair and consistent, is fairly obvious. It's not obvious how the Centre to Points transformation should be (Sum of Squares? Linear? etc)

4) Evens out country allocation
-Some countries can eat into others better; Imagine a Turkey that can just keep taking centers until the other players behind a stalemate only have their essential dots left.

5) Player count is non-arbitrary. Centre count can be pretty arbitrary.
-If a game is drawn with 4 players, it's hard to argue its obvious or easy that it should have been 3 players.And it seems obvious that each player is worth less, since they could not eliminate each other, and thus combine these observations and it seems logical the 3-way draw should reward more than the 4-way draw; the player count is non-arbitrary.
-If a Turkey draws with 12 compared to 11, or a France with 9 instead of 8, it's non-obvious or easy to argue the T12 or the F9 should be more rewarded than the T11 or F8 respectively. Those center count differences are most likely arbitrary or artificial to how the game played out.

6) Player Number method rewards and incentivices small powers to keep playing seriously. The opposite is in Centre-based methods
-This isn't just theory craft, I've gone to tournaments with C-Diplo or DeTour scoring that is heavily Centre-based and when you survive with a small amount of Centres and prevent the solo and get shat on when it comes to rewards it's extremely demoralizing. I know one of the reasons points and PPSC were introduced in the first place was to incentives people to keep playing, even when their power was small or losing, and I don't think this draw system would keep in that spirit.

These points aren't deductively proven, but they're how I see and think about the topic.

@orthaic) I disagree that we should simply allow lots of different game-types. I'm not saying we HAVE to only have 1, but I'm very worried about splintering the community. Especially for live games its hard enough to get a game going with two point-types, if there were three/four it would only fragment the player base more. Regardless of what those types are. My two cents on that topic.

@ATC almost any tournament system starts with WTA and then works from there, so if we're using that as a reasoning...

And early-arranged three-way draws are a problem in every system in meat space and the wired, and would be rewarded in both Centre based and Number based systems so not sure what the point is there. There's other more interesting ways to deal with that, such as Rank based draws or Sum of Square Centre based draws (such as used at Carnage or 2014 Boroughs respectively (threadID=1201952)).

While Rank and Sum of Squares are derived from Centre counts, don't get me wrong, sorry I didn't make it clear I understood that, neither of them is linearly proportional like PPSC tries to be. And it HIGHLY accents point 3: It's intuitive and relatively obvious that the points should be X points / N players to each player with a Player based method.

There's 10s of different Centre-based methods, all with pros and cons, and it's not obvious or intuitive which one should be implemented if we go down that route.
http://www.diplomaticcorps.org/Scoring/scoring.html
http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/ftf.htm#Tournament Scoring Systems

I'm ancient and in the UK I have some connection with the NGC rating system. Fact is, the system here should rate on the rating of the players. i.e. players rating x bet totalled - pool of rating points. Rating is decided on a proportion of the pool, then allocated to player(s) who receive their share divided by their rating. Thus you force good players to always go for a win. This works much better than the existing system, which effectively rewards players simply for playing reasonably, but brilliantly, thus rewarding longevity!

@Chumbles, GR has some of this property. Once, at what I believe was at or close to his peak, MadMarx lost a point of rating for a three-way draw!

Nice points, Chumbles.

I think that player ratings and scoring systems are separate problems - the scoring system determines how valuable an individual result is, and the rating system determines whether a that result was a good performance for that player or not.

I agree that a player's points are not a particularly good indicator of their skill, but that's a separate topic.

As I've discussed more thoroughly in other threads, I love PPSC.

For me, what will ruin a game of Diplomacy for me more quickly than anything else is players giving up. The "equal Draw" rule that exists in both WTA and PPSC contributes a lot to this, encouraging players to keep trying even if they are small in size. PPSC, in addition to this, encourages players to keep trying even when a solo seems imminent.

This, of course, sometimes takes the form of collaboration with the "big bad", and everyone hates a collaborator, but personally I think this adds a very interesting element to the game. It adds more diplomatic options for those trying to solo, and it also adds more diplomatic options to those trying to stop a solo. Being able to throw the game and still get points means that you can make larger and more realistic demands than if the only way to throw the game is through sacrificing your own points.

If I'm playing Press Diplomacy, I prefer for it to be more than just an exercise in mathematics. I enjoy the variety of goals players develop over the course of a given game, and the even greater variety of means players use to pursue those goals. I love the fact that any outcome is theoretically possible if you can talk your way into it. I love the fact that every player does not have the exact same preferences, the exact same priorities, because otherwise it would be impossible to talk anyone into following a different route and every game would go the same way.

Fascinating Tas, but I have to ask, assuming WTA solos, for Draws only, would you rather have Player Number based or Centre Number based?

Thanks Tas! Would you consider the addition of a centre-based draw method to be a positive thing, then? It would provide a third set of incentives, and encourage different behaviour.

@Tin_can: There are also tournaments which limit the game to 12/14/16 turns (so it ends in 1906, '07 or '08)

This is of course done for reasons of limited time, but it does have a big impact on how you play in 1903.

Sharing points in a limited tournament setting is very different - I used to play in the leagues on webdip, where four linked games would determine your league performance and meta-gaming was the expectation (ie making deals across boards, it was specifically encouraged by the league rules)

Most face-to-face tournaments are multiple games where your 'score' in each game contributes to your overall tournament standing. (whatever else that score is based on - some even offer a 'best austria' award...)

I think a time-limited variant would also be fun. (especially for live games)

Before anyone jumps on this like last time it was mentioned...

"Meta-Gaming and Cross Gaming:

Players may not enter into agreements or alliances spanning more than one game, although they may consider different players’ league positions in their decision making within a game"

-http://tournaments.webdiplomacy.net/The-php-League/thephpleaguerules

@Valis, weird and impossible to enforce, no?

No more than in any tournament. It's quite easy to be ethical and/or play within the rules with the minimal modicum of effort...

My own take on draws (and a significant number of mine *grits teeth* have been where I've nearly won) is that all survivors share. More often than not, it's the plucky crewman with no rep that stalls the big monster long enough for the rest to form up... "Never give up, never surrender!"

It would indeed add different incentives and behavior, but I'm not certain that it'd be a net gain in favor of perseverance for WTA games at least.

Equal Draws in WTA games encourage players to try to survive at all costs. Even if they're weak, there is a substantial reward for making it to the end with even a single center. That always encourages me, at least, to keep on fighting for survival.

In PPSC games, unequal Draws (based on center count) might work. It would reflect how the game works in the case of a solo, and offer some intriguing incentives. It is difficult to say exactly how it would play out in practice, but since PPSC already encourages players to try and stay alive in a tight spot it might be worth a trial.

Thanks Valis, I love an insane. unnecessary piece of idiocy, so I thought I'd suggest some additions:

"....although they may consider: different players’ league positions; [inspect the entrails of a newly slaughtered chicken; whether they've got out the bed the wrong side [or whether Mars is up Uranus] in their decision making within a game."

Let's keep this on topic, league participants/detractors :)

Thanks ATC. Will do. Happy to talk more in PM or a different, appropriate thread about anything.

Huh. I had assumed that PPSC draws were also counted as PPSC. They're not?! I certainly think they should be then. :-)

As for whether WTA or PPSC encourages "sticking it out to the endgame"... I think they just encourage different endgames. Players stick it out or start NMRing for all sorts of reasons - WTA vs PPSC is, IMO, hardly a deep factor.

Either you stick it out for WTA because you might be that 1SC power on a stalemate line or threaten to throw the game to that big power if other powers don't stop fighting, etc, or you stick it out in PPSC and play janissary whilst keeping as many SCs as possible, etc. They're just utterly different endgame goals.

^I also thought that when I first joined the site. Draws in both game modes are shared equally, as described in the rulebook.

Right. Well, I'm with Jeff_Kuta above then, might as well just flip it open to all four combinations and leave it for players to choose games. :-)