Announcing the 2020 Masters Tournament

[TemplarsBane]

So I was thinking about my own play in this tournament and brainstorming about ways to improve it.

Asking people to play consistently at a high level for a literal year is a HUGE ask. Add onto that the massive turn length and you have games stretching out for ages, people not even remembering who their allies were, hardly any communication aside from your one ally and maybe one enemy, and there start to be some patterns.

Could we shorten each game somehow? Like make each game a 10 min phase game and have it be live tournaments? Maybe play 1 game a week. Giving a few hours each Saturday or something seems like a MUCH easier ask than to be consistently at a high level for a year.

Obviously some players (maybe even myself) wouldn't be able to commit to such a schedule, but I think it would produce a higher quality tournament. Thoughts?

[New England Fire Squad]

So I was thinking about my own play in this tournament and brainstorming about ways to improve it.

Asking people to play consistently at a high level for a literal year is a HUGE ask. Add onto that the massive turn length and you have games stretching out for ages, people not even remembering who their allies were, hardly any communication aside from your one ally and maybe one enemy, and there start to be some patterns.

Could we shorten each game somehow? Like make each game a 10 min phase game and have it be live tournaments? Maybe play 1 game a week. Giving a few hours each Saturday or something seems like a MUCH easier ask than to be consistently at a high level for a year.

Obviously some players (maybe even myself) wouldn't be able to commit to such a schedule, but I think it would produce a higher quality tournament. Thoughts?

A live tournament would be amazing.

[Octavious]

In the good old days, when webDip had a highly active live game scene with several full press live games each day, the ten minute games were always a disaster. Ten minutes a phase is a painfully long time when you've entered your orders and said everything you want to say, and have nothing to do but watch the clock tick down... Followed by watching ten minutes of retreat phase and a further ten minutes of waiting for someone to build an army. It gets mind numbingly dull and people would quit in their droves. I suspect that quite a few people deliberately created 10 minute games purely to take advantage of CDs to increase their win rate, much like they did with 12 hour phase games.

You could be forgiven for thinking that, if you found a group of like minded players who'd agree to ready up as soon as practicable, then the game could be sped along most of the time with ten minutes only taken when absolutely necessary... and yet someone it never actually worked out that way.

Live game tournaments have been attempted in the past. I think bo was the last person to give it a serious go. But despite some hurculean efforts by organisers they never go particularly smoothly. Considerably less smoothly than this tournament has, at least.

Ultimately the problem we have is that the calibre of people who play diplomacy tends to be far inferior to what we like to believe it is.

[Jamiet99uk]

Octavious is right about ten-minute-phase games. It turns out to be pretty much the worst possible phase length, because you have to be prepared for each year of play to take up to 50 minutes (Spring Moves, Spring Retreats, Fall Moves, Fall Retreats, Fall Builds). You play for two hours and you're just into 1903.

A 10-minute-phase game, in practice, requires players to be willing to sit attentively at their computer, hitting "refresh" every 15 seconds, for anywhere between 6 and 12 straight hours.

You might have 6 to 12 hours free every Saturday to stare at webDip, but I don't.

If it were possible to create / program a game mode which featured 10 minute Spring and Fall move phases but, say, no-press retreat and build phases of 2.5 minutes each, then that might just about be feasible.

[New England Fire Squad]

A 5-7 minute phase tournament could work. Maybe not on a massive scale, but I'd personally love it.

[TemplarsBane]

I wasn't committed to 10 minutes specifically, but 5 minutes usually isn't long enough for long conversations. So maybe 7 minutes? And I think there is some kind of setting I've seen in like Rulebook Press where there's no press in retreats or builds and also there's no option to "Save" moves. You have to hit ready in those phases which would save a LOT of time.

[Claesar]

You should join the live FTF tournaments that are being hosted every month. Next up is the Liberty Cup: https://liberty-cup.com/2020-liberty-cup/

[Octavious]

It's a different skill, certainly. You need to get your point across concisely without sounding domineering, which can be a challenge. You do have a lot more time than you think, though. Knowing that the person you're talking to can reply instantly can lead to more back and forth in five minutes than you get in an entire 24 hr phase.

What there was talk about years ago was the possibility of having longer press phases and short retreat phases, but that died along with live game popularity. Playdip manage to have a double length initial phase, so you'd imagine it was doable here. Perhaps not.

The other problem with live tournaments is time zones. Europe likes to play several hours earlier than America, and Australia and Asia tend to be excluded completely. Still, where there's a will there's a way. Just be aware that it's possibly the hardest type of tournament to run, and although it is very different in atmosphere to something like the Masters you'll still get loads of dropouts.

[Octavious]

You should join the live FTF tournaments that are being hosted every month. Next up is the Liberty Cup: https://liberty-cup.com/2020-liberty-cup/

Why is the fashion for ftf tournaments on backstabbr of all places? Their map is hideous

[New England Fire Squad]

You should join the live FTF tournaments that are being hosted every month. Next up is the Liberty Cup: https://liberty-cup.com/2020-liberty-cup/

I might actually do that. Do I need a camera?

[New England Fire Squad]

You should join the live FTF tournaments that are being hosted every month. Next up is the Liberty Cup: https://liberty-cup.com/2020-liberty-cup/

Why is the fashion for ftf tournaments on backstabbr of all places? Their map is hideous

You are right. Just made an account, and it's ugly as hell. No idea why they wouldn't just use this site.

[captainmeme]

You should join the live FTF tournaments that are being hosted every month. Next up is the Liberty Cup: https://liberty-cup.com/2020-liberty-cup/

Why is the fashion for ftf tournaments on backstabbr of all places? Their map is hideous

You are right. Just made an account, and it's ugly as hell. No idea why they wouldn't just use this site.

GM functionality, Sandbox mode, and the support arrows make a bit more intuitive sense than the ones here do :D

[Durga]

Backstabbr map is waaay nicer than webdip guys

[Squigs44]

People have different tastes, and when you get used to one map, another map might seem weird. I personally like the clean look of backstabbr, but I still can't wrap my head around their support arrows, being used to webdips. The sandbox mode is really what makes sense for the f2f scene. Easy to mirror a physical board using sandbox mode.

[New England Fire Squad]

Backstabbr map is waaay nicer than webdip guys

BOOO I practiced on sandbox mode and it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to support hold

[Durga]

Backstabbr map is waaay nicer than webdip guys

BOOO I practiced on sandbox mode and it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to support hold

Maybe it's less intuitive but once you get it it's great!

[goldfinger0303]

So I was thinking about my own play in this tournament and brainstorming about ways to improve it.

Asking people to play consistently at a high level for a literal year is a HUGE ask. Add onto that the massive turn length and you have games stretching out for ages, people not even remembering who their allies were, hardly any communication aside from your one ally and maybe one enemy, and there start to be some patterns.

Could we shorten each game somehow? Like make each game a 10 min phase game and have it be live tournaments? Maybe play 1 game a week. Giving a few hours each Saturday or something seems like a MUCH easier ask than to be consistently at a high level for a year.

Obviously some players (maybe even myself) wouldn't be able to commit to such a schedule, but I think it would produce a higher quality tournament. Thoughts?

Our players in this tournament are scattered all across the world. I think that reliably setting aside a time where 49 people could play a live game simultaneously across timezones would be near impossible.

I'll also add that 36 hr phases are about as short as turn lengths go. Some tournaments in the past did 24 hr phases, but those tended to have even worse NMR and dropout rates than this one. Length of the tournament has always been the Masters' biggest handicap, which I tried to remedy by having several rounds concurrently, but even then I know of some players who have told me they're burned out by too many games.

Something I've thought of is to go rulebook press to encourage people to ready more often, but I feel that is quite a major change and am leaning against it. Another change I've thought of doing next time (but haven't adopted now for consistency's sake) is after a player NMRs, if I see they've entered orders to push through the phase immediately. I could also make tweaks to pause policies to try and keep games going smoother. Shaving off a day here and there with small tweaks in each game will quickly add up to a lot shorter matches, I feel.

[Claesar]

I wasn't committed to 10 minutes specifically, but 5 minutes usually isn't long enough for long conversations. So maybe 7 minutes? And I think there is some kind of setting I've seen in like Rulebook Press where there's no press in retreats or builds and also there's no option to "Save" moves. You have to hit ready in those phases which would save a LOT of time.

I would strongly recommend against Rulebook Press for live games on webDip. In fact, I hope we've disabled that. The problem here is that if you press 'send' seconds after the deadline, your entire message is lost. Unless you're a mod, then it sends that last message to Global and outs you..


We frequently receive bug reports from people who suddenly can't send press anymore in one of their games. It's always Rulebook Press..

[Claesar]

You should join the live FTF tournaments that are being hosted every month. Next up is the Liberty Cup: https://liberty-cup.com/2020-liberty-cup/

I might actually do that. Do I need a camera?

You do not. Virtual Massacre (the last tournament) was played with voice chat only, via Discord. Liberty Cup should be the same.

I would recommend joining one of the many practice games being organised. I played one last Saturday. It's good to have a feel of how long 15min/phase is when you can only talk to one person at a time. For me it's similar to 7min/phase FP live on webDip.

[goldfinger0303]

Hi all,

I realize all games have been paused due to the site updates. I will unpause them all in ~8 hours.