So I joined because the word on the street was this site had an active live game community. It does. Just active enough to muster about 5 or 6 players for the start of any cheap live game.

This is annoying, sure, when I have saved 2+ hours to be able to play. But I get it. Real life comes first (happened to me), and sometimes you forget.

It would not matter much if the other players recognized the game was skewed and ended it right away. But they (often/not always) do not. As a result, I have to spend two hours in a game I cannot win just because I will keep my word. Not F@#@#$ fun.

None-NOT ONE-of the games I have started here has ended without a CD. And it ruins the game. Rude of the disappearing people, but rude of those who dont handle it without screwing the other players.

Sorry to rant, but just ended a game with 5 CDs, including by a replacement.

Later game CDs are equally annoying, but less clear of how to handle. Often, they come when a stalemate is possible, but somebody doesnt want to invest the time/effort necessary to fight for a stalemate line.

Play to win, otherwise play to stop a solo and be part of a draw. But for F@#@# sake, play. Otherwise you waste the perfectly good time of other players.

And if you are the beneficiary who LIKELY would have been stopped but for the CD, I can understand the impetus to play for the solo. But consider the other players on the board, who have invested the time, and ask yourself whether improving your stats (likely without justification) warrants wasting another hour of their time.

This is why I don't play live games anymore. I've CD'd a couple of times, but innocently (and I had one more which is entirely different...). The amount of CD's in live games is just ridiculous though.

The flip side of the late-game-CD that was mentioned above may refer to me in a recent game. I took over Italy in gameID=131190 in Spring 1903 with units still in home centers. England was clearly on his way to a solo while various draw/cancel votes were cast. I dutifully put up my draw/cancel and went about allying with @virtuslex to try to stop the solo. France left at about the same time, but someone immediately picked up the (good) position. The Germany broke France's line (and spirit) so he quit. Then I supported France and went through Tyrolia toward Germany and he quit. At some point I turned the corner into MAO and blocked England just about the time virtus moved to ION. Studying the board, I saw two options for him ... move to EMED in an effort to thin the eventual draw by eliminating Turkey (who consistently voted cancel not draw anyway) or stab me. I decided to trust him and he moved to TUN. In fairness, he passed through TUN in the spring moving to NAF and continued to help against England, but by that time (a) I was making progress against England, and (b) he had sown the seeds of a stab. So I stabbed. A couple of turns later I had gotten leverage against England when he suddenly quit. SO at that point, I was already moving toward an eventual solo, and play by England did not seem to present a problem (though it certainly would have been harder than his CD). I too had invested a couple of hours, and saw no reason to pass on the solo just because my opponent picked up his doll dishes and went home.

P.S. I should add that England consistently refused to vote cancel or draw throughout in spite of being there from the beginning and being a primary beneficiary of the CD's by Germany & France.

P.P.S. Germany came back at the end and almost caught me napping. That would have made it a bit more interesting perhaps.

@virtualbob - not at all directed at you. You played well and were rewarded (though the end game move to den was probably unneces..... :P).

I was moving to NAF regardless, as I thought would have been clear from the lack of any army move to even tunis, and just wanted fleets to keep the stalemate line in case England finally figured out the multiple CDs.

My annoyance at the late game behavior was Turkey and England. It was clear there were multiple CDs and the fair thing to do (as you were voting) would be to draw, but both steadfastly refused to do so -- apparently unaware that he would gain about as many points from a draw as a survive.

Like I said there - pleasure playing with you and you stabbed at the right time. Just annoyed by the lack of manners of so many players by not playing out bad positions. Complete disrespect for the time of 6 others.

Virt, you bring up some of the frustrating things about live games here. All it takes is one inconsiderate person to completely waste the time of 6 other individuals.

There's a couple things you can do and try and circumvent this: 1) Higher buyins. This isn't a cure-all, because there's people with a large amount of points that will still quit when they see they will lose. They are selfish and inconsiderate, and would rather six other players waste an additional two hours (on top of an hour already invested) than to waste 30 more minutes of their own time finishing their turns. I wish there were formal options when setting up a game to select a maximum "resign rate" a player may have to join. This would help a bit.

Another way to help prevent this is by forming games with like-minded players. We used to have a club here (I'm just coming back to the site, and I suppose it could still be around, but I don't think it is) full of players who are known to be reliable. To be more accurate, it simply excluded players shown to be unreliable. These games had their own forum thread (to organize games), were password protected, and were open to anyone. However, if you were to ever quit one of these games, your name would go on a blacklist and you would not be welcome back for any future games with the club.

This wasn't a perfect solution (since it was reactive, not proactive), but it was the best we had. These games rarely had quitters, for a couple reasons. Players who found the thread and went through the effort of trying to organize a game were most likely players who wanted higher quality games, to begin with. There were times where there would be quits at the start of the game (you can never prevent it completely), but there were established protocols in that case so the other six didn't waste a couple hours of their time playing an inbalances games.

I think it would be a wise idea to start of a club like this again.

I would join. To make it work, though, there would need to be an email list or PM notification or something about the password so that everyone in the club (and nobody else) got the password for the protected game. Someone would have to maintain the list as well to make sure that new people were added and any drop-outs were dropped.

Or did you just handle it by the "honor system"? As I noted earlier in this thread, the "honor system" eventually broke down on the JCB series.

My rule of thumb: if someone CDs in Spring AND Fall, i keep my cancel vote up for at least 2 ingame years. Then I switch it to draw.

If someone NMRs Spring and comes back for Fall, it depends on their situation, but usually I'll cancel i they do.

Late game CDs, it all depends on the situation. If that CD would allow me or someone else to solo, I draw, and try to stop a solo.

If there is an NMR in S1901, the game should be canceled. There is really no argument here. A draw is something you earn - not to mention a GR draw doesn't count until after 1903.

Well, I don't really care about GR. I just like taking points away from those who don't show up to live games as a punishment.

More often than not, Chaqa, a player who CDs in 1901 is going to have a low point total and will end up getting refunded anyway. Also, points don't matter.

Neither does GR.

Bob-

I played the first five or so JCB games (if that was even the same JCB series you are referring to). I think they were pretty much the last games I played before I left. I don't really even remember the premise of the series, to be honest, let alone what happened with it.

The club was an open club. There wasn't a specific member list that we had to maintain. In essence, every user is a part of the club until they CD; then they are removed.

The banlist can be maintained somewhere. The easiest way might be might be a google doc linked in the first post of the club thread, for easy access. Otherwise, it can always be maintained through the thread itself, though that may be cumbersome.

There's no nead for a mailing list, as everything is conducted through the forum thread. When someone wants to organize an official JCB game, they post in the thread and try and collect 7 online members. Once they do, they create the game, and whisper the password to the participants. These aren't true anonymous games, as you know the users who are in the game (the list of players in the game should be posted in the thread so every participant knows who is in the game, not just the creator, to avoid any unfair advantage).

Someone would need to maintain the list, yes. Giving open access for everyone to edit this list leaves open the possibility for false adds/removes, but we can have a number of trusted people with access to it, as to not place that burden solely on one person. If you have access to a list and someone CDs in your game? Easy, go add the name to the list yourself. If nobody in the game has access, PM somebody who does or make a post in the thread to get them added to the list.

From what I recall, there weren't too many CDs in these games. Having to post on the forums and talk to people to actually find a game will weed out most of them.

I'm not too sure how big the live game crowd is, at the moment. Are there enough forum-goers here that play live games to support something? I think a club like this will grow that part of the community, as well. As pointed out in this thread, live games are hit and miss. It really sucks to have 2-3 hours wasted on a game that isn't fun and is imbalanced. I suspect there's a number of players that decide not to take that risk, even if they would play if they could be assured a good game.

I typically will draw for the first 2 years after a 1901 CD (I dont care about the points, but I want the CDer to have that resign on their record, not get amnesty from a cancel. After 1903, I'll then cancel, as to not impact GR. The only downside to this is people who don't want to impact their profile ratios on win/loss/draws.

And yea, if someone NMRs spring 01, that's an easy cancel. Being late happens sometimes. Sometimes in that 15-30 minutes waiting to start the game a person can get distracted and it's not hard to be 5 minutes late. That's entirely different than just not showing up at all. That's for live games, of course, but longer phases may have it even worse.

If I create a game right now, with a start date of a week from now, I could leave the site, come back at noon tomorrow and already have an NMR. Once joining a game, A person is pretty much compelled to check the site every 24 hours (or whatever phase length the game is) or they risk missing the beginning of the game.

As pointed out, CDs later in the game are much more complicated.

All this talk of live games makes me one to play one. I'll post it in the live thread, but figured I'd post it here since it's relevent to the subject of this thread. gameID=131257 if you are interested

"I dont care about the points, but I want the CDer to have that resign on their record, not get amnesty from a cancel."

Exactly. Except for Spring 1901 which should be an auto-cancel (or at least auto-pause) by the system.

This issue gets discussed a lot, but a lot of it boils down to drum-beating by the people who loose their cool with some of the younger players.

Of course noobs are going to CD, NMR, gunboat and metagame.

If you find this to be unacceptably, then simply create a private game. Problem solved.

All of this drum-beating about how low quality the games here is more a drag on the community than anything else. If you're not happy, please set up private games.

One more thing, is that I tend to resent the pressure from some players to draw a game that hasn't started well. If there is a consensus to draw, then players should draw. If some people want to play, then it's bullying if you try to force them to terminate a game that they don't want to. If you're finished with a game and have no interest in continuing or become dissatisfied for whatever reason, then walking away from the game is preferable to trolling the people who still wish to play.

Since its my post, and I decided to stay on the site despite annoyance, I will take on the burden of creating a mailing list. Just say youre interested and I will pm details and will start a new thread when we get to 10ish.

@virtuslex

And if it makes you feel any better, bud, things do get better. Once you've been here just a little bit (usually a couple of months is enough) things get better. People will recognize that you're punctual and have good sportsmanship and will both invite you to good matches, as well as be receptive to invitations. It really doesn't take that long. Patience, my friend.

Count me in.

If we could import the reliability system from vDip, I'd be so happy.

If you cancel, the resign doesn't show up, i think. This has been one of my primary reasons to vote draw over cancel.