What if we tracked the number of times someone went CD and then used that number as their "CD rating". Then we would need an option when you create games to limit people who can join to those who have a CD rating below whatever amount you want to set. You could also make it so that whoever started the game could specially allow someone to enter the game if they didn't make the cut but you wanted them in the game for some reason.

Well, I meant besides exploding GPS devices...

It would probably also be good to have one point on the CD rating drop off after every 10-20 games without a CD so that someone who had messed up their rating could get it back down.

There is the concern that this might encourage second accounts.

But I think I agree nevertheless.

Wouldn't that just cause people with high CD ratings to abadon their ID and create a new one?

yeah, what he said

But then, they'd become multi-accounters, and get banned altogether.

jacob, you can advertise new games on the forum and make cd%, rating, and games played qualifications for those who want to join.

not if they discontinued using their last account.

One problem could be that people, wanting reliable players set high barriers which prevent people from playing the games needed to repair the cd rating. This would probably be avoided if you only allowed people to start games with barriers that include their rating, but it could be a potential side-effect.

Well, there will be plenty of regular games in which a chronic CDer could repair their reputation. And I think the CD rating should go down quickly - Maybe 10 points for a CD and you knock 2 off for every game finished. And maybe you get a maximum of 20 CD points per week so if something comes up and you CD in 6 games, it won't leave you in an unrecoverable hole.

Perhaps someone who hasn't had a CD in a month gets a -2, so someone who NEVER CDs could get well into the negatives, and then if something bad happens, they can come back in and their previous reputation would save them from consequences?

I'm sure there is a good explanation from Jacob on this, but I couldn't get past stratagos comment! I can't stop laughing! Man... having a TERRIBLE day at work today, and you just changed it around stratagos.... That... that was good! One and done. Thanks, stratagos :D

Sceptic_ka: That's why you use the games played requirement.


Jbalcorn: Wonderful idea. I'm going to support that.

One tries, knox, one tries ;)

i think i have a better, easier idea. since we already keep track of how many times a person leaves or goes CD, instead of this 'cd rating', when you create a game any person with more than 'x' number of quits cant join. like you could set it to 0 and you could only join if youve never left a game.

But then there's the problem which brought all of this up: what if it's a one-time mistake?

jbalcorn said it better than I probably can.

bump, hoping kestas or figle chime in.

the biggest CD'ers are newbies... what the game REALLY needs is an email reminder when your game has only x (4? 6? 8?) hours left... so newbies are reminded about that cool game they tried a day ago and are more likely to return to keep playing and become horrible addicts like us.

Yes, email notifications do wonders for retention.

I somewhat like the idea.

Insofar as people changing accounts because of bad stats;

I believe there are two main types of phpDiplomacy people (well, beyond initiate noobs of course) people who invested in thier profile and people who are not.

Those who are invested enough won't generally change profiles, even in the face of bad stats. Personally I've grown attached to my profile after such a long usage.

Those who aren't invested on the other hand, will change for even less rationale anyway.

I have just started the second round of the GDFT tournament here. Where people went through a commitment process of sorts to get to the second round. In one game two players NMR'ed in 1901.

Nothing is going to stop those who lose interest from dropping, punishment in terms of web site points is non-effective considering that it requires people to be point conscious in the first place.

What I would suggest is
No game is processed with a missing order in Spring 01 and that the player is ejected and a new game is redrawn
With almost 30 % of the games having a drop in 1901 this eliminates a major section of the problem.
I would also suggest that a code advancement be introduced to allow players put a set of orders in for a future turn as a back up.
I would also suggest that an email be sent to players who have not had their orders in before the turn is processed with the option at game start to have a game delayed automatically by 6-12-24 hours for an NMR notice.
An Artificial Intelligence for a set of orders might also be good to jump in to do a set of orders of at least a defensive mode rather than an NMR.

Yeah, I've been here 3 months and I now have "friends". I wouldn't want to have to re-make those friends by changing profiles.

"I would also suggest that a code advancement be introduced to allow players put a set of orders in for a future turn as a back up."

Intriguing Edi, and as someone who did NMr on you once, I appreciate the sentiment. Problematic however, in that it would need to be speculative.



Overall, though, I like how your proposals are very constructive rather than punitive. Obviously I can't comment on its viability, I do like the idea of a defensive AI for single turn NMRs. In other games I've played, missing of build turn results in auto-builds, utilizing a predetermined formula.

Retreats too, could definitely have coded auto-completers.

Hmm... I like the idea of Nueral Implant Bombs or trained Marine Snipers... Ohh food for thought, maybe going CD takes away a certain percentage of your Diplomacy Points

CD does: you loosing your investment in that game. I think Edi makes an interesting point about 1901 missed moves however, although I can see a situation where players would get very annoyed if their new game next got off the ground simply because players kept going CD - particularly likely with longer phase games where new players often join, get bored, and never return.
I'm pretty sure Email notifications are on their way back (yes, we used to have them, but how many of you can remember that!), and there will be a number of other improvements here and there that should help in round-and-about ways at limiting CDs. Future orders or auto-orders are something I wouldn't like to see because future orders persuade people to play the game without diplomacy and auto-orders remove some of the logic of the game (unless the algorithm is suitably simple, such as all CD units try and support-hold)

I like some of Edi's points, but the concept of 'look ahead and make moves' would be a rough job to code... deep in the game there are a LOT of possible outcomes to the board, so predicting the right ones would be rough...

I like the idea of killing a game on a NMR in 1901, but I feel it'd be abused. ie: I got drawn Italy AGAIN? Forget it, I'll just NMR and join another game...
There must be a way to prevent this from happening (NMR 1901 and you can't join a new game for 2 days?)

I still think emailing would improve retention and remind those loyal players that simply 'miss' a turn because its a game with a turn period that's different than they are used to (this is why I prefer 36+ hour games... not to mention all that extra communication you can put in).

Yeah, that email when the 7th person joins a game and the clock stops sure would be useful.

I meant *starts* not *stops*.

*goes for more coffee*

I don't think there needs to be "points" that are lost. Your CD rating should just be a number equal to the number of times you've gone CD. Then there needs to be an option when you are creating games that lets you limit who can join based on their CD rating.

For example, I might start a game with that option set to 2 - that way only people who have CD'd 2 times or less could join.

And it IS effective - I've played a different game online where they had a drop/quit percentage and you could limit who could join games based on that. I actually quit a couple of games before I really understood the site and I had to start my own games for a while because I couldn't join other people's games. Believe me, I was glad when those drops fell off my profile and I was very careful not to let it happen again.

You could make the CD rating to be a combination of "Games Played" and "CD Drops". So the higher rated players would have a lot of history on their accounts (reducing the abandoned profile).

I agree with the simplistic approach.
Something as simple as a CD percentage would be fine.
=(number of games quit via CD) / (number of games *finished*)

You don't need to introduce any complicated decay algorithms with time and whatever else. The system will naturally balance itself out once it's implemented and everyone gets familiar with what a 'normal' base-line cd rate should be. (This assumes users could see cd rates on other player's profiles).

If you're really worried about such a system hurting new players then you could only allow the cd limits to be used with higher point games, or something..
(I don't see this is as a problem because if a new player joins and then can't be bothered to keep track of their first few games they're probably not going to stick around for long anyway. And if they do want to turn over a new leaf and they decide to create a new account to start fresh, how does that hurt anyone else? It may wipe away their CD history, but at that point they're still probably no more or less likely to CD than a real new player).

One caveat though:
When I first joined I tried one of the rapid games, and then promptly cd'd after a turn or two because I needed to go to sleep..

This could also self regulate (with players simply avoiding rapid games if they're not prepared to keep pace with them), but in the long run I think an overhaul of the rapid (arguably 'real time') games might help.