Because counting survives allows complacency in the face of a solo.

I feel worse about my survives than I do my defeats.

I think this idea that defeats are better than survives is bull crap. A defer means you got steam rolled and were in zero position to influence the outcome. You might fail to force a draw but that's better than being eliminated entirely. Frankly making survives count is useful because it means other players have to think very carefully about trying to eliminate players from draws and it gives small but surviving players leverage to influence the outcome and maybe make a draw (of course I'm not sure that survives stat influences that much
Frankly it probably makes little practical difference, but I am a student of Triumvir, so I was raised with the motto "win if you can, draw if you must, survive at all costs"

I think the most important point here on the side of keeping Survives is that it encourages continuing to play even in the face of a solo. A new player, a casual player, who has a 3 center turkey and sees a 15 center england about to win doesnt simply stop playing and CD because they "already lost". Sure, survives aren't perfect, people will be delusional about their worth; but on an administrative level survives discourage late game CDs. The real question is what affects the game more: A CD or an actual player choosing to play their game terribly?

"People will throw the game just to survive because they have some delusional understanding that it is better than a defeat. It's trash."

I'm a big proponent of throwing games, and it has nothing to do with getting a survive. I'm losing either way; I want people to suffer for thinking they could get away with killing me, or I think my best shot at a draw is being in the right place on the stalemate line against the guy I helped get to 17 centers, or Tru Ninja's pissing me off and Yonni's been nice to me all game.

@ghug, no one said that doesn't happen. DO is saying throws also happen because of having a survive stat. They aren't mutually exclusive.

I have never seen that happen outside of a PPSC game and I've been on this site for four and a half years.

Huh, that doesn't sound as cool as I thought it would...

@ghug you must have muted Al Swearengen

"It is silly to insist that there is any single "best" goal in Diplomacy. Everyone has his own priorities and trying to fit them all into one's own mold is small-minded." -Rod Walker. A Gamer's Guide to Diplomacy (March 1979)"

Keep that in mind. Survive stats are simply another way to mark the games. Some people like them, some people don't. At the end of the day, does it really matter if someone else's view on Diplomacy doesn't correspond with your own?

@ghug ... happens all the time.

Hell, I've done it.

@bosox. You've thrown games because of the survive stat?

Good lord, I just looked at some of those Valis games. Did Italy really convoy you to Tunis to win? Why? That's lunacy.

Valid you really do play with awful people. That Italy convoy is gold. I wish I had your opponents.

Wow. That's crazy. At least if we implement the new system, playing against players like that won't boost his ratings.

Excellent Quotation Peregrine Falcon. Excellent.
Hapapop I agree with your comments regarding players who recognise 4 possible outcomes, win, draw, survive, defeated ( perhaps defeated could be better described as eliminated from game ? ) who play WebDiplomacy here,
& players who recognise two possible outcomes, win & didn't win.
This site offers a range of ways to play Diplomacy.... I think that's good, I dislike this puritanical insistence on one or other of these "orthodoxies" being floated by the fanatical enthusiasts for their chosen "superior" form of Diplomacy and the insistence that all players conform to a limited choice
The view that it's win = had fun, enjoyed game, and didn't win = no fun, no enjoyment as the only two possible outcomes from a Diplomacy. gameis in my opinion simplistic and incorrect .

I thought the PPSC debate was on hold to give everyone a chance to play using SoS in particular & allow Mods & others who run the site time to attend to a multitude of other tasks, then there would be a review of the changes, and at that time the PPSC conversations would resume.

There's a typo in that, the phrase ...who play WebDiplomacy here.....has somehow been inserted where it shouldn't be

MajorMitchell, there is a third set of possible outcomes: win/draw/lose

Yes Leon, I agree with the opinion there's more than win / not win
You see it as win / draw / lose
Hapapop suggests there a players who see win / draw / survive / defeated

I think you and Hapopop are equally entitled to see the outcomes in the way you each prefer, as are all of us & there should be a range of choices to to accommodate a range of preferences

What do you think Leon about the quote from Rod Walker posted by Peregrine Falcon earlier in this thread ?

2.
Either i win or something else happen.
I start games with a 50/50 chanse to win in other words.

If you can think of an example of bad play, bo_sox will have done it.

Bo is the worst.

However I have also, on about two occasions, thrown a game in order to teach another player a lesson. In both cases, the game was down to 3 or 4 powers. I was in 3rd / 4th place, and the player in second place was throwing everything at me, while the leading player was close to a solo. After several attempts at "stop killing me or you won't be able to prevent him from soloing" fell on deaf ears I reverted to threatening to hand my SCs to the player close to a solo, to ensure they would win. I've done this in quite a few games, but in two cases I can remember, I actually went through with it.

Nothing wrong with a survive. It's still a loss, but it's not much different than a defeat.

I'm Resigned to having this discussion....continuously.

@MajorMitchell

There is no "best" goal in diplomacy. There are only the goals described in the rulebooks. This sounds so much like the PPSC debate, which isn't surprising, considering the two are related.

In my humble opinion the results go in this order:

Solo
2-way Draw
3-way Draw
....
7-way Draw

Survive where you made someone solo when you were not going to be in the draw

Defeat where someone solos

Survive where you failed to stop a solo that you could have reasonably stopped (and been in the draw)

Defeat in a draw. (maybe this should go up one spot, if only to punish your stupidity in the result above)

Out of the losing categories it is clearly better in my mind, if less people finished better off than you (and, if you have to lose, it may be nice to spite some people too).

Whoa, you have humble opinions ^^^ ;)

Ahaha, fair point. I should have put in my (not so) humble opinion!

The order discussion is interesting - we're not planning to put an ordering on the results, of course (other than the one inferred by points). But it does illustrate that people care about survives in different places, so it's worth still tracking them.