http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3qbyhj/

"not that's it better. Just better features." How does that not make it a better site?

because their features make the game too complicated in my mind. I don't like the RL group feature, the RR, and several other things about it

Its just too much at time. Too many options. The variants are not balanced, map glitches are frequent, etc. To adopt those things would change this site too much.

RR though, that would be nice to have here

vdiplomacy.com

@Fortress Door

Reliability Ratings (RR) are an attempt to stop players who deliberately attempt to cheat the system. If you NMR your RR drops by a small fraction, if you CD then you get hammered. This is called an unbalanced CD. If you have an unbalanced CD to your name you can rectify the situation by taking over a CD in another game evening up your unbalanced CD quota.

ie. I've CD'd in 3 games... OMG... I need to take over 3 CD'd countries in order to rectify my RR rating, so that I can join the games that I want to join.

As for RL groups, this was an attempt to try to track players who know each other in real life. vDiplomacy no longer discriminates against players who happen to belong in an RL group.

I fail to see how this is a detriment to community gaming, as it is actively trying to discern cheaters from players who are active in the community. Please elaborate upon what the ''several other things'' happen to be.

i am aware of how the RR works and the idea behind it, i play on vdip as well. It just seems to complicate it and makes harder, if you don't want cd'ers to join, just make a passworded game

I think there was an example of someone who protested it should be gotten rid of. He was playing with a friend (in his RL group) and at the beginning it was announced that they were friends in RL. From what i can remeber from the post, those two players got piled by the others (non-anon game, if you remeber the post as differently, please let me know, i am going on sketchy memory here)

Mostly just pet peeves for me that i don't like about vdip, the color is drab and dull in my mind, and the chose-your-country-setting gets rid of the only element of luck in the game (as well as helping multi's to be next to each other), and i don't like that the vdip community doesn't play very many live games and mostly just plays variants, though some of the special rules they make are fun.

Oh, i also think that emaling the mods is better than a whole seperate mods forum. I am not sure, but do they also contact you from it? I almost never look in the mods forum (i am doing nothing wrong, why should i?) and i thus think that people (mostly me, maybe others) would miss a message if the mods were contacting a investigation to see if you are multi'ing/cheating/meta'ing, thus warranting a ban,

And the rule that you cannot advertise anon games yourself seems somewhat useless. Where in the rules does ot say you cannot reveal yourself within the game? if you don't make the rule that people cannot expose in-game, i don't think you need bother about players revealing themselves.

I just stating what i don't like about vdip, i am not asking you to make all the changes like i own the site.

And, don't get me wrong, there are many things i like about vdip. I like the fact that is alerts you when you get a PM is very useful, for example

mostly ranting, but that is my view.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. The color is drab while the white and grey on this site makes it look more lively.
The RR rating for me is useless because I'm at 0% because when I went on vacation I CD'd in all of my games and that was like 8 of them. So now I can't play any games and I'm out for good.

and if you are going to force people to take over postions, you should make it cost nothing to join, unless that country is worth more than the orginial bet

@KingOfDip, seems to me like RR is very useful with regard to you. You skipped out on 8 games! I imagine the other players are happy that you are out for good.

But are you really out for good? Does having a 0% RR mean you can't even pickup a CD position to fix your RR? If so, maybe you could ask a mod if they can tweak your RR value so you can make penance by picking up CD positions.

@FD, if you don't NMR and don't CD, then you aren't forced to take over positions.

I do agree that CD pickups should be encouraged by lowering or removing the costs of picking up bad positions, but that point stands alone IMHO, no need to tie it to the restitution required from those wanting to fix their RR after messing up a bunch of games.

i missed the first phase of the only non one on one game i ever played on vdip. (i joined a game that wasn't supposed to start for ten days and i assumed it wouldn't fill up over the weekend but it did and started without me, i only missed one phase) then we canceled the game so now i have a rating of zero and i can no longer play any games. i sent a message to the mods on their forum but they never helped me so i just don't play there any more

So you think because the game engine works the same over there as here and you were an idiot that you should get a second chance? Go join a bunch of CDs and prove you are worth playing with. RR is the best thing to happen to the web diplomacy code since press variant implementation.

yes i just read back through these post and went and joined a cd'd game. i had never tried that before. lol

but that was when i was new here too and i didn't know it would start as soon as it filled up, i thought it was like a live game

@seth24c: There are no limits in joining games depending on your RR in the first 20 turns. So you shouldn't have any problems joining more games.

well it wouldn't let me before but i joined some cd'd games so now i can join up to four games it said, because i have only missed one of three phases

vdip sets a limit on how many games new players can play

which annoyed me to no end when i first signed up :|

NOTICE: You cannot join or create a new game, because you seem to be having trouble keeping up with the orders in the ones you already have

You can improve your reliability rating by not missing any orders, even if it's just saving the default 'Hold' for everything.

Please note that if you are marked as 'Left' for a game, your rating will continue to take hits until someone takes over for you.

Your current rating of 34 allows you to have no more than 4 concurrent games before you see this message. Every 10 reliability points will allow you an additional game. 2-player variants are not affected by this restriction. Any you can join as many 'open' spots in ongoing games as you like if there are no additional restrictions for the game.

this is what comes up when i try to join more games

That's a bug than.
Can you message me your vDip username, so I can check this?

Fixed...

@ FD

''It just seems to complicate it and makes harder, if you don't want cd'ers to join, just make a passworded game''

- Not everyone has a group of players who they know to PM and play with.

"I think there was an example of someone who protested it should be gotten rid of. He was playing with a friend (in his RL group) and at the beginning it was announced that they were friends in RL''

- As I said RL groups no longer discriminate, it was attempt to tackle Metas and Mults

"the color is drab and dull in my mind,''

-Would you prefer neon pink?

''the chose-your-country-setting gets rid of the only element of luck in the game (as well as helping multi's to be next to each other),''

-Then don't join games that have that function, or better yet don't choose to set up a game that has that setting. And I beg to differ that this is the only element of luck in a diplomacy game.

''and i don't like that the vdip community doesn't play very many live games and mostly just plays variants,''

-The community is small, if you want a live game play here.

''though some of the special rules they make are fun.''

-Agreed

''Oh, i also think that emaling the mods is better than a whole seperate mods forum. I am not sure, but do they also contact you from it? I almost never look in the mods forum (i am doing nothing wrong, why should i?) and i thus think that people (mostly me, maybe others) would miss a message if the mods were contacting a investigation to see if you are multi'ing/cheating/meta'ing, thus warranting a ban,''

You are missing the point of the Mods forum. It is not a platform for moderators to contact you. It is a platform for you to contact the moderators. Only you and the moderators can see what you have posted in the Mods-forum. It notifies all moderators whenever someone posts a problem there. If the moderators want to contact you then they will PM you.

''And the rule that you cannot advertise anon games yourself seems somewhat useless. Where in the rules does ot say you cannot reveal yourself within the game? if you don't make the rule that people cannot expose in-game, i don't think you need bother about players revealing themselves.''

-There is no set rule against this, although it is highly discouraged to do so. Just like posting cheating accusations in the forum is highly discouraged.

@Oli/Sleepcap, in that error message, the word "Any" doesn't seem to fit.

"Any you can join as many 'open' spots in ongoing games as you like if there are no additional restrictions for the game."

Perhaps you meant the word "Also"? Although you could just leave it off altogether and just say "You can join..."

On vDip we had a serious problem with players joining too many games. Everybody (esp. the new players) joined 10+ games because they wanted to try all these variants and later realized they can't keep up with all the games going and went CD screwing the game for everybody else.

A CD is also a much bigger problem because of all the variants, because if a classic-game gets screwed here, you join another one, but your favored variant might not start again that fast, so you are stuck with that game for a while.

At the moment we have 22% of your active player count (and they prefer different variants), that's why it's hard to get a life game going.

With such a small community it's not easy to gather enough regulars for a passworded game. That's why you can set a minimum RR on your games.
80% of the games do not use a RR restriction, it's basically a replacement for the passworded games here.

And there is no rule against anon-advertising, only 2 different user-groups with different views on that matter. We found a compromise, as a forum-post with a link to an anon game the poster is a member of gets posted without username now.

@Alderian - When going on vacation, I automatically assumed there would be internet (who doesn't have internet?!) which was a mistake and ended up costing me my entire account due to the RR rating.

Well, you know what they say about assumptions. (Disclaimer: I'm not perfect either.)

In any case, it hasn't cost your entire account. Pick up some CD positions and you'll fix your RR.

I agree wit kaner on almost everything he said there. Just saying, the beige background looks awesome on vdip.

@King of the Dips - That's why you get a decent data plan and make certain you can tether your phone to your laptop.