Civil Disorder Take-overs

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

My profile states "Civil disorders taken over: 0", but I have finished about 10 games that I joined via open position (with more to come). Is this an error or am I missing something?

Separately, is my ghost rating affected by my open position games? If so, that's a pretty bad system. Players who take on terrible positions are doing a public service and shouldn't be penalized - they already suffer from getting 0 excused missed turns upon joining. On the flip side, a player who joins an unusually good open position hasn't really earned those points if the game ends favourably for them.

[CaptainFritz28]

If I'm not mistaken, ghost rating is affected by taken over positions. I agree, it is a poor system, and one small change would fix it. Simply disassociate open games taken over from others, like bot games. One may argue that if someone takes over a poor position and goes on to win the game, they should be rewarded for it, but I think the spirit of joining open games is already that you are doing it for the others, not yourself.

[Aristocrat]

I think all 3 counters (playing / civil disorders / taken over) are broken in one way or another.

As for GR, yes it is an issue. If you join a game, your GR will be affected as if you played the whole time (win or lose). On the flip side, you can avoid hits to your GR by dropping out of games you are losing. Reliability rating somewhat limits the ability of people to abuse the latter, but you still see it happen.

I think the countervailing concern is that you need some kind of system to incentivize mid-game joiners to actually play their game out as well as possible. Otherwise folks are liable to silent quit when things don't go their way, or pursue wildly outrageous strategies, etc. in ways that people with skin in the game would not.

[learnedSloth]

I have previously suggested counting losses for the dropout instead.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Maybe the overall impact is marginal, but all these issues erode the integrity of ghost ratings. Personally, I'm unlikely to ever rank high enough for this to matter. But having a ghost score that only reflected the games I joined from the start would help me track whether I'm getting any better at Diplomacy over time.

Encouraging players to trade reliability for ghost score is perhaps the worst part. I've definitely seen very active and high-ranked players drop from unfavourable positions. It's impossible to know if they had a real reason to drop, but it's very unfortunate that they might be inconveniencing everyone else to pad their score.

The concern about open position players just playing goofy if there is no point consequence is something I hadn't considered. I don't know if that possibility is worth the other issues caused by the current system, but that does seem like a difficult problem.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I have previously suggested counting losses for the dropout instead.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Not sure why this isn't the case already, I see absolutely no downside.

[CaptainFritz28]

Otherwise folks are liable to silent quit when things don't go their way, or pursue wildly outrageous strategies, etc. in ways that people with skin in the game would not.

But even under the current system, mid game joiners have no "skin in the game" other than the hope of winning more dip-points. You don't have to bet any points to join mid-game. There is GR, but if you think you are going to lose anyways, you may as well try something extravagant to get out of your situation.

[CaptainFritz28]

Maybe the overall impact is marginal, but all these issues erode the integrity of ghost ratings.

It is definitely not marginal. This is a major problem that should be addressed.

The concern about open position players just playing goofy if there is no point consequence is something I hadn't considered. I don't know if that possibility is worth the other issues caused by the current system, but that does seem like a difficult problem.

See my above comment.

[jamesa7171]

I have previously suggested counting losses for the dropout instead.

This is such an obviously good change that I am surprised it has never been implemented. Even people who could not care less about their own stats will benefit from this, as they will see fewer CDs from other players.

[The Fox]

Yeah, I used to join bad position CDs as a community service until I learned I was getting dinged badly for it, then stopped

If changes were made to stop penalizing people from taking over CD positions, I would be interested in doing so again

[Yonni]

For some context - it was historically done this way because, when scraping results from WebDip, you only got the final game state. Now that it's been integrated into the site, there's no reason why it can't be tweaked.

[CaptainFritz28]

For some context - it was historically done this way because, when scraping results from WebDip, you only got the final game state. Now that it's been integrated into the site, there's no reason why it can't be tweaked.

Good to know, thanks.

[kestasjk]

Hmm, wasn't aware of that, let me look into it

[A_Tin_Can]

If you're looking in to it - the reason we didn't include joined-this-game-but-then-CDed in the data given to the off-site CR implementation (it wasn't scraped, it was a DB script that generated a dump to be parsed by the GR implementation, at least it was when I was looking after it) is that the records of CDs weren't accurate at the time.

I think there were a few cases where it was possible not to have it on the record, depending on when / how it happened, and when / how the player was replaced (I suspect the mod tooling possibly left different history to a natural takeover, and I also think that it might have mattered what phase things happened in).

Even if those issues were fixed, we couldn't correct them in the game history easily.

[kestasjk]

Hmm.. Okay I think I've got my head around GR now. In points terms it's winner-take-all with three modifications:

- The bet size for each player is their points divided by 17.5 * two numbers based on the variant / press type.

- If you draw and it's SoS you get your supply center count^2 / total supply center count^2, otherwise it's a regular WTA split.

- The bet and payback happens when the game ends instead of when it begins.


And of those three the only difference that really matters to the rankings is that your bet is proportional to your total points and based on game type. (To me SoS vs proportional split when a draw happens seems like a pretty trivial difference, I wouldn't expect that would change the rankings that much. Let me know if you disagree)


What if we merged GR into the points system, so that we just have points but it works like GR, and that's how we account for CDs:
- Everyone's points are reset to be equal to their GR, so that the GR rankings won't change.
- Remove references to "points" and replace with "GR", and remove the separate GR rankings.
- Remove the ability to enter a bet size, and instead make the bet size equal to the GR bet size (i.e. your points divided by the same ratio based 17.5 * the variant / press type).
Then the only thing that matters is points, we don't have two ranking systems, and taking over CDs doesn't affect your ranking as it doesn't cost any points.

The only unintended consequence I can see is you wouldn't have a GR for each category; there would just be one single value. It would also have the consequence that players who CD would be punished by losing their ranking.

Any thoughts? I do think it'd be nice to have a single system vs having two, especially if no-one cares about points anymore.


If we do want to carry on having a separate GR that works independently the simplest change would be to modify it so any users that came in and took over a CD simply aren't included in the ranking calculation. To me though it's weird that a user that's losing can CD, be taken over, and their ranking won't be changed due to that game, so something more comprehensive would be better.. And also a player who takes over a CD I feel should be able to benefit their ranking as a result..

Hard to think what that would be without it reducing back to points, with bet size adjusted for the players' points as above.. I guess it could look at all players who CD'd and reduce their score by their expected value, and distribute that GR loss amongst those who took over? Seems kind of artificial though.

[JECE]

I mean, getting rid of would delete the only record of player performance that didn't penalize CD takeovers. If you're going to do a radical change like this it would be better start with a blank slate than to inherit points from the flawed GhostRatings system, right?

[Yonni]

My two cents:

- Get rid of points and replace it with GR
- Add a new "points" or "kudos" or "medal" system where people gain points for taking over CDs. It's a parallel track that gives people credit for doing a good service to the site. Add this to the HoF so people can compete (and add FP HoF while you're at it...).

I don't think there's a perfect way to deal with CDs in the context of GR and I honestly don't think it's a massive problem. It's an issue around the margins that we can just live with.

[kestasjk]

I mean, getting rid of would delete the only record of player performance that didn't penalize CD takeovers. If you're going to do a radical change like this it would be better start with a blank slate than to inherit points from the flawed GhostRatings system, right?

Hmm, I definitely don't think starting from scratch would get much support.. The ghost ratings could be recalculated to factor in CD takeovers, at least going as far back as that data is recorded (which is pretty far).

The idea / intention is that this wouldn't be a radical change; if people are generally more happy with ghost ratings this would replace points with ghost ratings, but use the points mechanism to do it and as a result:
- No custom bet size, bet size is equal to the GR calculation
- Have a single rating system instead of two (which makes sense if no-one cares about points anymore)
- Your GR gets seen everywhere instead of being hidden away, as it'll replace the points number
- CD takeovers still have no bet requirement, as is currently the case, but because it's up-front instead of at the end of the game people who leave a game forfeit their GR/points and people who take over a CD benefit

To me it's a question of whether it's unanimous that people support/care about GR over points. If so it seems to make sense to ditch points and make them work in the same proportional way, but with free CD takeovers, so we get the best of both.

My two cents:

- Get rid of points and replace it with GR
- Add a new "points" or "kudos" or "medal" system where people gain points for taking over CDs. It's a parallel track that gives people credit for doing a good service to the site. Add this to the HoF so people can compete (and add FP HoF while you're at it...).

I don't think there's a perfect way to deal with CDs in the context of GR and I honestly don't think it's a massive problem. It's an issue around the margins that we can just live with.

Agree there's no perfect way / ideal scoring system, and I can see the merit in making it a separate rating.
In a way we already have that as you can see how many CDs a user has taken over on their profile page, but to me your rating should be prominent and shown clearly next to your username; ideally it's best to have a single rating if possible.


The GR code isn't ideal for accounting for CDs with how it runs after the game is over, while the points code can use free CD takeovers a lot more naturally.

If GR is universally considered better than points / no-one pays attention to points this single change to switch custom bet size to the GR calculated "bet" would get rid of points, make your GR more visible, and deal with CDs in one go. (So you would see your GR wherever you currently see your points)


I didn't expect a favourable response tbh, just thinking out loud.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Maybe I'm missing something, but Dip Points don't mean a thing. I actually found them very confusing when I joined the site and I'm still a little perplexed by them. You can't lose them all, you can get them from bot games (I think?), and you can accumulate a ton of them at once if you get lucky in a high stakes game. I can't think of any other competitive game that uses rankings + some other random system like Dip Points. If some people are fussed about the points they've accumulated, give them a little badge to that clarifies they earned a bunch of points before the system was improved lol.

GR is a much better measure of skill. It would be better if games had GR requirements rather than Dip Point requirements, as it would better match skill level.

And GR is only a little flawed right now. On average, for most players, it's a pretty accurate accounting of their ability. For a handful of players like myself who did a lot of open positions under the current system, too bad so sad, make a fresh account if you find it very troubling.

[DougJoe]

you can get them from bot games (I think?)

Not from "started as a specifically a bot game" games. You pay 5 and always get 5 back no matter the result.