I will also accept answers in percentages

40%

10%

15%

34.7%

47.8%

17,288.4

The answer should be 100%

Every once in a while we agree +1. ^

We have a winner! Can the rest of the forum pick the correct answer above via +1s?

After how many games was WTA implemented?
After how many games was WTA the standard?

^The answer to those questions are pretty big clues.

is it 47.8%?

and if so, can i have all the plus 1s going to that answer?

The answer is 10%! Everyone give Fiedler a stack of +1s for a prize.

It's small because PPSC has been around much longer than WTA, and because PPSC was the default for so long.

The percentage of WTA games over the last year is probably quite different.

Hey how bout that. This site is way to easy to hack, lol...

Does 2 plus ones count as a stack?

So I went to Finished Games, I clicked on the tab to open search parameters. Then I changed the page number in the URL and used a binary breakdown. There are 3152 pages of classic full press games. So 10 games a page, so 31512 (2 on the last page).

Then I added the WTA only and did the same thing. There are 482 pages in that criteria. So approx 4817 WTA games. This is assuming the games per page is actually working correctly.

Any member can do the above btw. The search lets you break down games in a lot of different ways.

You did all that, but did you give fiedler a +1 yet?

Nope, because 4817/31512 is about 15% not 10. So while the games per page might vary I feel like 15% is the best answer a member should have been able to guess. So I +1'ed thomas dullan

I still think PPSC should be default for new players.

I still think we should remove PPSC, see JECE, we're compromising with our current setup! That's what makes us good Diplomacy players.

ssorenn is still the biggest douche/poser (of a 12 year old homophobic boy) loser I've met on this site; going back four years or more. If this site had any balls, it wouldn't allow the 'free speech' advocated by folk like ssorenn do be spread like a venereal disease here. PS I am guessing he's more like a 42-year-old homophobe/elitist/a hole but he did a GREAT impression of a 12-year-old.
Peace out all

Ranscott47, you're just flat out wrong. Frankly, you should know better being here for 4 years.

That honor goes to Al Swearengen. ssorenn is 2nd.

Hey, come on guys. Keep it civil.

I thought that award went to me :'( Why are you being rude not to acknowledge me?

TrPrado, you can prove yourself on the field of battle. I think we're in a game together? If not we should rectify that.

I'm not sure which one that would be, but I do believe we have played each other before.

Havent had the, um, honor of encountering Al Swearengen, Valis. Hope to keep it that way.

Ranscott needs a tissue. His VJ is dripping

jmo1121109: Compromise? Ha ha, good Diplomacy players convince others that they're right, because of course they are right, so they don't need to compromise.

I would argue that good diplomacy players convince others that they have compromised when they, in fact, have not.

I see the argument in making PPSC default for beginners (I guess you could say that PPSC is diplomacy lite), but pedagogically, I'm not sure that it's good to start players off on a version of the rules where it's not really possible to break alliances against you with press.

"You should stop attacking me, or he'll get too big and solo!"
"So?"

"You should stop attacking me, or that other guy will get too big and solo!"
"So?"

etc.

Secondly, there's no easy way to tell if players are new to the game or just new to the site. If we had a different default for new players, how would we tell which to set the default to? We don't want experienced Diplomacy players from elsewhere to think that we have an ....unorthodox... scoring system championed as the default. This is at least part of the reason it was changed.

Pedagogically, I would recommend to disable ppsc entirely, especially for beginners and new players. People should learn the rules first, before they are allowed to try out abnormalities; ppsc is a clear violation of the official Diplomacy rules.

As a compromise, it could be considered to make all ppsc games automatically completely unranked.

Nesico: PPSC isn't actually a clear violation of the official rules. That's how we ended up with it in the first place. The official rules say only that the soloist wins, and that draws are shared equally. PPSC doesn't violate either of those.

However, centre based scoring (in draws) is widely accepted in the FTF community - even though it's not what the rulebook says. We currently have no mode that scores draws by centres.

The rules don't mention second place. There is only a winner.

If the site didn't have buy-ins for games, but still kept track of other statistics, there wouldn't be fractional values awarded for PPSC wins. That wouldn't make sense.

More to the point, as has been discussed many times, PPSC creates perverse incentives. In certain situations, PPSC games award players with fewer SCs more points than they would otherwise earn in WTA. That's a huge problem.

ATC, well, I read it differently. Both "solo-victory" and "the winner" imply there are no other winners.
In ppsc a soloist shares the victory with the other(s); in other words, whenever someone has a ppsc 'solo'-victory, everyone on the board wins, and is thus a winner; the 'soloist' is usually awarded 18/34, the remainder goes to the other players, i.e. winners. Anything less than 100% is not really a full win, it's a shared victory, which doesn't seem in line with the rules.

@Nescio,

You do realize that there is an entire contingent of people, even including senior players, that feels the exact opposite of how you feel about the situation?

@Nescio,

I should also point out that there is a healthy minority of players who sneak into WTA games with the intent of shooting for a fiefdom (e.g. completely ignoring the style of gameplay that you advocate).

"We currently have no mode that scores draws by centres."

PPSC should score draws by center. That way the game is just played out until someone wins or everyone draws and "point" result is the same. It is precisely the draws shared equally in PPSC that warps people when they switch to a WTA game.

Drawing *as a goal* in PPSC doesn't mean the same thing as it does in WTA due to the concept of a "strong second." If PPSC is anathema to Allan Calhamer, it should be anathema to any Diplomacy web site.

@JK - the official rules explicitly refute what you say. PPSC is only different from WTA in the situation of a solo. A draw is just that - all surviving powers draw equally.

PPSC is a total abomination. If you go there, go all the way.

IMO a points per supply center game should divvy up the points per supply center when the game ends. The other stats (wins, survives, etc) are secondary.

There has been a lot of different ways to score Diplomacy over the years - not all of them precisely follow the rulebook, but most of them are WTA in solos (or very close to it):

http://www.world-diplomacy-database.com/php/scoring/scoring.php

Jeff: I'd love to add a centre-based draw system some day. We've been looking at sum-of-squares, as it's the system that WDC is going to use next year.

I don't really want to modify PPSC, as otherwise past games will be inconsistent (and players might rightly complain that they're not playing the system they signed up for if it changes mid-game).

If people stop playing PPSC, we could look at disabling it, but I think there'd be complaints if we did it before then.

Right now also, the way CD takeovers work (you have to ante up some D, rather than simply taking over the position for free and keeping the ante from the CD player), WTA takeovers are almost always going to be points negative for the person who takes over. PPSC takeovers are not as likely to be points negative.

Certainly every takeover position I've looked at and joined in quite some time now has been in a PPSC game as a result. And no, I am disinterested in "improving my RR" - it's pretty hard to improve it from 100%.

If draws were divided up based on the number of supply centers, we might see more fighting before a draw was agreed, which might result in more solos...

I think that would be an interesting variation.

I believe that's the reason supply centre scoring is more common at FTF tournaments. With draw-size scoring like webdip has, there's a point in the game where you go "hmm, do I push for the solo or try for the three way?", ie, you choose not to solo at some point.

With centre-count scoring you always go "how can I get more centres", which is also continuing to work towards the solo.

A counter-argument to that is that "run for the stalemate line" is no longer really much of a thing under centre-count scoring. There's a certain thrill to be had by being one of the powers on a stalemate line and thus forcing your own inclusion in the draw.

Of course, those against stalemate lines will view this as a great thing, and those in favour of stalemate lines will hate it.

That said, I don't object to any of these scoring systems - but they do all actually encourage very different endgame play, and sometimes that endgame play difference echoes all the way back down mid-game or even maybe to the start of the game.

I'm gonna argue that none of them are inherently better. They all just mean it's a different game.

"run for the stalemate line is no longer really much of a thing under centre-count scoring. "

Yes, it is? If draws are split by centres, solos need stopping just as much as they do in draw-size scoring.

Oh, right, assuming winner-take-all for solo, but draws split by centres? I was thinking PPSC + centre-count-draws.

^ Never mind, my confusion. Provided winning by solo is significantly more rewarding than being a 17SC power, and losing to a solo is significantly worse than being in a draw (of whatever size), then that preserves the necessity to care about stalemate lines.

I was thinking that if you were to adopt JK's suggestion of PPSC counting "all the way" (i.e., it's just straight up centre count whether it's win/lose/draw that matters), that would mean stalemate lines decrease a lot in importance.

@A Tin Can,

Thanks for taking the time to outline your reasoning. The above more or less sums up my thoughts on the WTA v. PPSC controversy.

The rest of my motive stems from anecdotal experience. When I play WTA with the local crowd, my experience is generally that pretty close to the start of the game the edge powers will simply attempt to poke the central powers until one of them begins to topple. After that the remaining players will dash madly for the stalemate line, with minimum effort to backstab and essentially zero of the necessary risk shouldered for a victory.

I think the difference of opinion stems from the desirability of a draw, which reflects in my opinion the desirability of a political gridlock. There are reasonably intelligent people who think that the role of legislative bodies, particularly those featuring strongly entrenched political parties, is to argue back and forth until a draw results, accomplishing comparatively little each legislative session.

It's really just a matter of preference. To some people, a stalemate is a good thing. I happen to simply prefer more decisive play.