In PPSC games:

If result is a win for one player, all points are split by number of supply centers between the victor and survivors.

If the result is a draw, all points are split evently among the draw participants.

It's a screwy hybrid with screwy incentives.

Don't play it.

PPSC is quite good when you're just starting and would quite like to keep a few points for your efforts despite failing to get a decent result. In reality, though, unless you are one of those players who actually value points and play games with large point entry fees, there is no real difference between PPSC and WTA.

If one values GR over points, it makes a huge difference.

ben: GR stands for Ghost Rating, which is a ranking system created by a player named TheGhostmaker, and is based on results over point gathering.

http://tournaments.webdiplomacy.net/theghost-ratingslist/ghost-ratings-by-category

The rules regarding points are all here:

http://webdiplomacy.net/points.php

The "Draws" section answers your specific question.

Idea- a point distribution system where:

Upon soloing, the victor takes 100% of the points.
But upon drawing, survivors get points according to their supply centers. This solves the annoyance of small powers getting equal shares in a draw, but also removes the incentive to eliminating powers.

@ trip

How does it make a huge difference? You will only notice any difference at all if you've specifically joined a game with a large pot, and you only ever join those if you value points in the first place.

Octavious - I'm pretty sure the Ghost Rating calculation is very different between PPSC and WTA with respect to solos. In WTA you basically get all of the combined participants' GR (minus your expected value) whereas in PPSC you at most get 18/34 of the combined GR (again minus your expected value). I.e. Soloing a WTA game improves your GR much more than soloing a PPSC game against those same opponents.

It depends on what meaning you ascribe to "value."

For me, the main value of points is as a barrier to entry for new, inexperienced, or untrustworthy players. If you've worked hard enough to earn 300-400 , then that means you've got some skill. This works for me because I prefer to just create a game with a higher point threshold and reasonable RR rating and let anyone join. Takes too much time to put out the word and invite people.

More points is kind of nice, but at a certain point they don't matter. Hoarding points isn't an indication of skill in the game, but skill in acquiring points.

@ Oct: A person who has a high percentage of strong seconds in PPSC will (should) have a lower overall ranking than one who has a similar percentage of draws in WTA.

More points is kind of nice, but at a certain point they don't matter. Hoarding points isn't an indication of skill in the game, but skill in acquiring points.

That being said, most of the highly ranked players have high point totals, but that is to be expected as having positive results (point gains) is how the get that ranking.

Back when I first started cheaters would flock towards high point games. A live game with a buy-in between, say, 50 and 100 had a high likelihood of having cheats in. Games with 5-10 point buy ins were almost always clean and fun. Games with over 100 rarely had cheats, but were almost always full of people who believed in the "play to draw" philosophy.

Because of that early learning experience, I have always favoured low point games, and in the happy world of low points games you notice virtually no difference between PPSC and WTA. When nobody in your game cares about points, nobody has any interest in how the points are divvied up.

OK, I see what you're saying now. For the difference of a point of two there's no reason to throw a solo. My question would then be why set the game up as PPSC if it only makes sense to play WTA?

GR (and whatever we replace it with when we integrate an improved ratings system) will always follow the same incentives as the scoring system used.

I think there's a lot of confusion between scoring and ratings - here are some definitions that are useful:

Score: The outcome from a game. This tells you how good a particular game result is under a particular scoring system. On webdip, we (currently) have two scoring systems - WTA and PPSC.

Rating: Rating tells you how good a particular game score is for a particular user. Did a newbie get eliminated vs the best on the site? Well, that's not a bad result. Did the best on the site and get eliminated vs a bunch of newbies? That's a pretty terrible result.

Our scoring systems are very easy to model (ignoring points for a moment): In WTA, you score 1/(number of winners), where "winners" includes draw participants. You score 0 otherwise. PPSC scores 1/(draw size) in a draw, or (number of centres)/34 in a solo. You score 0 otherwise. Modelling the score this way is what GR currently does.

Webdip currently has two scoring systems (PPSC and WTA) and two rating systems (points and GR).

No matter what the rating system used, you should be able to maximise your outcome from the game by maximising the outcome from the scoring system.

I would very much like to add another scoring system sometime (say WTA for solos, but draws divided by centre count somehow). We've discussed adding sum-of-squares scoring in the leadup to the World Diplomacy Championship next year - since WDC is using sum-of-squares next year. Sum-of-squares has the WTA-in-a-solo but centre-count-in-a-draw mechanic. However, a real concern is that we don't want to fragment the player base too much.

We're definitely planning to have a better rating system fully integrated, though. Who knows, maybe one day we'll remove points entirely (*ducks*)

~webdip dev team lead

Also, this question comes up so often that it makes me think we should at least consider renaming PPSC (assuming we don't remove it in favour of another scoring system). It's clearly misleadingly named for new members, and I don't think that's a good thing.

As an aside, I think webdip is pretty unique in the use of PPSC scoring - I'm not aware of another site that uses a mechanic where there are second places in the event of a solo. I don't think it's at all common in the FTF world either.

I think PPSC creates an incentive to keep playing rather than NMR. If you are in a poor position, with no chance to win, you might still get something from PPSC but not WTA.

The same effect applies to replacements. At the moment I am in a PPSC game as a replacement. There was never any chance of winning but I should get something from being a survivor. I would not have taken this on if it was WTA.

Points don't matter to me per se, but they matter to me because without them I cannot play.

It's probably blasphemy to think this, let alone speak it out loud, but it's pretty clear to me that whomever designed the PPSC mechanism misunderstood the concept of center-based scoring.

@Jim: I was thinking the exact same thing!

Thanks for the explanations everyone!

PPSC does seem odd, now. I honestly thought it meant "points per supply center," so it's interesting to learn that it's really "points per supply center if not drawn." It's interesting because it works out for losers, is irrelevant for drawers, and is bad for winners. Huh. I'll probably look to join more WTA games now... maybe it will make me more bloodthirsty... and/or get defeated more.

As an aside, I'm pretty new at this but I like the points because I can call them "D-points" and that makes me laugh. (I actually thought of them as "D-coins" originally, which is even better.)

@lorelei_s : Not that I didn't believe your in-game explanation, I'm just the kind of person who likes to validate the facts. :)