People will just talk to everyone and say that they talk to everyone????
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I've thought about this. An option that posts in global saying "X sent a message to Y" would be very easy to add (especially if someone is sending me scotch).

However, I think that it would incentivise longer messages. And, with webdips rules allowing off-site press, I'm not sure it's a good feature to have.

Yeah like 80 percent of my press is done off the site at this point

That would get incredibly spammy anyway.

When I played FTF I would take about a minute every phase to have a conversation with HR where we both knew I was lying and he did what I asked him to anyway. Having talked to someone means very little.

I've never met anyone who uses offsite press for this game, and it would be impossible with anonymous games. The feature doesn't have to be a message in global. In the list of countries at the bottom, you could list the countries that each player has messaged right below their name.

I understand that it's not a perfect reflection of diplomatic relations, but it's still a useful tool for gauging communication at least. And if you start messaging every country with filler, they're gonna be mighty suspicious of you.

What if the feature just displayed a number beside each country when you were talking to a specific country. Say for example you are England you and you click on Germany. Then beside each other country’s tab you would see a small annotation that reflects the number of messages sent from Germany to the corresponding country. So I’d i am England talking to Germany and the tab for France has 12 in small annotation I would know that this phase Germany has sent 12 messages to France. This could reflect the FTF notion of seeing who is talking to who in a discrete way that you can only take advantage of if you are paying attention.

For example (using same countries as before) if I see Germany had only 3 messages to France while France had 10 to Germany I could assume (not nessecarily accurately) that France was trying to turn Germany against me unsuccessfully. If I then see the following phase Germany send more than 3 messages he may be actually turning on me.

Of course I think this is of the least importance and if anything should be discussed on vDip as most of them seem to have some coding experience and are more likely to take this feature on.

Yes, that seems like a great way to implement this this feature.

Not saying I don’t like the idea btw. I’d love to play this feature if it became a thing. I played FTF before I discovered webDip (almost 4 years ago now, I’m getting old) and one thing I enjoyed greatly was the ability to see who rushed to who after a phase. Gave insight into their plans. Also was fun to misdirect using this same theory. If I had a a strong alliance with a country I would never start a phase by talking to them. Made everyone think I’d turn at anytime. Of course I’d let my ally know why I was doing what i was doing and they usually like the thoughts behind it.

Knowing how often one country communicates with another would provide possible insight into probable alliances. However, it would be far from perfect and, as has already been pointed out, open to abuse.

I can't see that It would be worth the effort.

WebDip allows for offsite press?! I never knew that.

I've never really played an FTF game so i don't get a sense for what i'm missing with this element, but my initial impression is that in this environment I think it may give away too much. I'm already turned off by the paranoia that little "online" indicator causes whenever somebody pops on or finalize indicator that's checked despite not responding to my outstanding message to them, so to add to that seeing 20 messages to other people i would see them send to somebody else i'd be tearing my hair out. Not to mention you would lose some of those online nuances that make this version fun like ... oh, is Jonny going to NMR here .. oh wait, he's chatting it up. Or having to decipher if France is intentionally ignoring my request to DMZ or if he's just having a busy day at work. These things don't really happen in FTF games but have become baked into the online dip world.

This option would add tons of extra effort in order to play without really paying off much.

VI, you're totally a vDip player.

FTF is a *much* richer environment - including the ability to read orders over other people's shoulders. Not that I would ever do or condone that behaviour, of course.

When we play FtF, we have gradually established a set of house rules... which while not in the official rulebook, we have found to make the game run smoothly. Rules like, "no writing false orders for other nations." Or "no stealing orders out of the orders bowl."

I like the idea of leon's feature... but in the end, with good players, I am not sure how much of a benefit it would be. Be fun to try it, though.

The order box has been sacred everywhere I've ever played FTF.

I've wondered about reverse crowdfunding for webdip feature development. Like, say if I go "I'd implement this feature for $500" then people can pledge towards the features they'd like. And when features get enough pledges to be funded, they'd get developed.

Or everybody interested put one shot of alchohol into a mailable container, when it equals a bottles worth..

@ATC... what is this 'order box' you speak of?? Everywhere I have played FtF we have used a bowl... or large hat. When we first began playing, we hadn't outlawed it. We were a dozen teens who had never played the game. We found that a non-sacred orderbowl led to chaos and violence. So after a few games we made it no-man's-land.

Usually we use the lid that the game came in.