well first, let's define meta-gaming

it's when two are friends and will be a super alliance: unbreakable

but how easy is it to find meta gaming unless it's really obvious they are not doing very profitable things against their friend.

how would you find metagamers? i cannot tell.

What if they are innocent?

Of course, a name and shame thing may be forgotten after a while. I do think there should be some penalty or consequence, but if there is one, there has to be plausibility or proof,whichever is felt appropriate, which may be hard.

Just kidding. It doesn't have to get that complicated, and the community should be able to trust admins and such.

I SUPPORT THE BLACKLIST (without need of a whole darn government besides what we got now,which is close to a monarchy except the rulers can't inflict any damage except banishment, so they have to be fair)

Could work, but the mods would have to enforce that. It was my understanding that the mods didn't want to get involved when there was no set rule against it in the FAQs. I guess you would know best though.

be fair to keep users attracted

will the point penalty be decide by the mods or the users?

will it be fixed ( at a high rate so no one owuld try), or variable de4pending on severity

It will be a mod power to inflict the penalty.

Should it be though? Currently it seems that things are community policed since it's not explicitly illegal. I guess I figure if it's not a site rule, the mods don't have a lot of power. With that being said, I'd support it being a site rule.

When I first started out, the question of metaing was also prevalent. Metaing is very different from say, multi-accounting, where with a bit of detective work, we can do a braddles on someone.

But metaing is impossible to detect if the 2 parties keep quiet about it. 2 different computers. maybe 2 different countries?

What if the person met him on the php diplomacy site, exchanged emails and say they will ally permanently in all their games, each one winning alternate games?

All punitive measures will just result in the 2 parties (or 3,4 parties) keeping quiet while they go about doing it. Without proof any judgment is rash, inciteful and has no merit. People will just game the system.

When the site was new, I always reminded everyone in my post that one of the best way to discourage meta-ing is to limit people to playing each other player one at a time. This will mean that I cannot play 2 games with the same player at the same time, and thus we cannot "share" victories, slowing down metaing by a huge factor

I agree that not all instances can be stamped out, but when players admit to knowing each other, it can be seen if they always cooperate. Not to mention that mods can see if users log in from the same workplace or school.

as you say, not all instances can be blotted out.
1. People can play from the same IP and not be meta-ing
2. People can play from different IPs and still be meta-ing.
3. I am sure some of the players here must have contact with some people they met on the site away from this site itself (e.g. MSN); is that meta-ing if they communicate outside the frame?

It really depends on what the community is looking for. A symbolic discouragement of metaing? or a crackdown in terms of somewhat draconic rules on who one can play.

@rratclif: Define "always cooperate." Can you see the future? Do you know they would never turn? All you have is a limited sample of games in which they happened to cooperate. Does 3 games where they became allies qualify as "always"? Where do we draw the line? It may be that all three games (or five or seven) they were in positions like R&T where they are a good fit to be allies. Or maybe E&F where, at a minimum, they keep a DMZ and stay out of the English Channel. Or I&F with the great DMZ that is virtually built into the map.

As far as IPs go, everyone in my company has the same public IP as we have one internet connection. We use DHCP to assign internal IPs and a switch routes any traffic coming in to the appropriate internal IP based on the subnet for the request.

I don't think it will be too bad. Yes it happens to some extend, but its controllable. Community responsibility can do something about it as you say, but we'll be able to take more of a stance in the update.
At the moment moderators can only ban,warn or ignore players for it. As to ignore or ban are often too extreme, we generally warn people, but in the next release I believe the ability to fine points will be added, allowing a more minor punishment to be made.

Impossible to detect completely, and just makes a point and judge culture like we already have with multiaccounting. That makes a fun game less fun, imho.

I've actually played with friends on here. They are the least likely to think you are going to stab them, which makes them tasty victims. Just my thoughts ;)

rratclif, for the purposes of this discussion, define metagaming.

Some people say it is agreeing to do something in one game in order to get something back in another game. Other people say it is allying with someone you've allied with before, because you know you can work with them. And I've heard some people complain that looking into someone's game histories is metagaming.

So what exactly are you wanting to prohibit?

Err I've looked at game histories, I thought that is what they are there for. Please don't deduct me points.

I actually think that the rules about meta-gaming are good generally but enforcement around the edges is impossible. I like to think that I don't metagame but then again if I'm playing with someone I have recently stabbed I will also be aware that they may look to 'get me back'. This shouldn't affect my gameplay, but I can't unknow the things I know.

How about mentally recording player types, cautious, agressive, etc. Is this meta-gaming. Even things like assuming that a political puppet with 3 loses in 4 games won't self bounce. Is that meta-gaming? If so how do we stop ourselves doing it.

The only way is to take our names off the board we are playing so that our identies and points totals are hidden. This will take away some of the social aspect, but then the forums are lively so not too much will be lost.

This wont stop friends metagaming, but maybe allowing games to be allocated by a mod would make it harder?

Generally I think most accusations of meta-gaming are from people who are losing legitimately but cannot accept that people can beat them without cheating. I got accused of cheating in a Gunboat game for moving EDI-NORG; LON-NORTH SEA; LIV-YOR first move???

@DipperDon: The technical definition of metagaming is "allowing anything outside the present game to influence one's tactics or attitude to other players" (no, I don't remember where I found that). That's incredibly broad, and no one means that when they accuse someone. Then everyone would be a metagamer.

The most common definition which is actually useful is probably more like allowing something from a previous (or sometimes current, if it's very spontaneous) game to cause you to favour some particular player, mostly in terms of the old "if you help me in this game I'll help you in that game" thing.

The latter is usually what people mean.

i officaly accuse sic and invictus of being friends in real life (possibly best friends/lovers) and that they metagame in every game that they are in together :p

You're wrong. We're the same person who enjoys making ridiculous statements on internet forums in a master plot to convert half of you to true, Goldwater-Reaganesque conservatism and the other into anarchists in an attempt to destroy the quality of players on the site and raise the ranks of the two accounts.

And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for trim101 and his piercing analysis of nothing!

Regarding meta-gaming rules from what Ive seen they're either unfair or unenforceable, which is a tricky situation :-(

But luckily it doesn't seem to be much of a problem

http://phpdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=8901 both ARANGEL and 大梦未觉 play all three of their games together, blatantly work together in all three games. France somehow moved over to Russia to help his friend Turkey against Russia, while he lost all his home supply centers. These two are obvious cases of meta gaming, if you check their profile histories. This, I believe, is a key example of what deserves to be punished.

Should meta-gaming really be illegal? If you are with friends in the real world and play a dip game, wouldnt having relationships with them affect your game?
Or if you went to a game with strangers and brought a friend is that "illegal"?

(besides, it seems that it would be easier to betray your friends)

It should be illegal at some point. Knowing someone in real life offers increased stability in alliances that normally you can't find online. If two people agree not to backstab they can throw everything to the front lines without having to guard themselves like the rest of us.

by the same token though, if you play enough games with someone you've never met in real life you can start to develop a picture of how trustworthy they are. If a person holds to thier alliances with me in one game, and i later find myself in another game with them, of course i'm going to be more willing to trust them than the guy i have no history with. is that metagaming?

"It should be illegal at some point. Knowing someone in real life offers increased stability in alliances that normally you can't find online. If two people agree not to backstab they can throw everything to the front lines without having to guard themselves like the rest of us."
You can also have wars and backstab people you know itn real life, just as easily as you could have rediculously dependant alliances with people you don't know.
I've done both.

Well, what also complicates the issue is that metagaming is not a boolean variable like multi accounting. It's more of a gradual scale, like "big" or "old". Technically, small things like attacking someone because of their point totals or carrying through your memory of past games played with another player could be seen as metagaming. But far more damaging are friends or family playing in unbreakable alliances or people trading off assistance in other games.

It's difficult to put in place any sort of official punishment because metagaming is easily obscured and also easily fabricated. I have no doubt that if we formally banned metagaming we would have a problem with false accusations.

Wow, lot of discussion since I left.

I view meta-gaming as using resources which others don't have the ability to use to your advantage. This can be leverage in another game, friendships/family/etc., but I don't think it includes histories or past game information. Anyone can see my history and judge how I've played, or see that I might be more likely to use one opening or another, or even see how well I hold my alliances. In contrast, having a friend in the game with whom your alliance is an agreed draw or trading of wins is not a resource everyone can use and therefore is just as bad as multiaccounting if you ask me.

I know not all instances can be stamped out, I was thinking things like "Player A and Player B have played a large % of games together, admit they know each other, and in every game haven't even pretended to be anything but the closest of allies". In my mind that's a pretty clear-cut case of meta-gaming, and should be punished.

@invictus: Wrong. He didn't analyze nothing. He could work with the fact that you have 134 points. I can't believe you didn't try to change that, as it's such an obvious giveaway.

Ha!

You thought we'd never catch you, didn't you? WRONG!

What about if you happen upon someone you worked well with in the past, and want to work with them again? Someone you don't know in real life, but instead, worked with in-game, and you know that your alliance will be hard to beat. No one can see your previous game history but you, so only you could know how certain people play.
Like going to war with someone because you've played them before, and know they're likely to stab you.

Onar, stab 'em for the win! Honestly, circumstance is far more important than history in creating alliances. This is why often even metagamers find themselves defeated.

Maybe, but not until it's the end of the game. That's my form of honour.
Give them an honorable second-place, while there's no one else left.

@Onar: Still metagaming then.

I've been in lots of games with friends and more often than not, we don't trust one another and eventually stab each other.