Excused Missed Turns is inefficient ?

[Senlac]

I don't know how to reconcile this for you. Your idea of what is fun and what isn't is yours and yours alone. My idea of fun is playing an unbroken game.

1) There will always be broken games. In one game I'm in (242303), two of the biggest countries just NMRd. One was replaced by an experienced player. One was replaced by someone with 30 points who then entered all hold orders. The experienced player is now way closer to a solo victory that should never have happened. For all the existing players, both those countries having all-hold orders would have been much less broken!

2) When it comes to preferences, I suggest you perhaps try actually looking at other people's sometime. Here's a set of comments from different players of a single game I was just looking at:
"With all due respect to the mods, it's a thankless job and they do it fantastically. I disagree with this new rule change. If you miss a turn, you should pay the consequences. Everyone else shouldn't have to wait because you forgot to enter your orders. There are ways you can pause a game if you're unable to play for a day or two."

"I also hate - HAAAATE - this new rule change. It is 100% pointless.
If you miss a turn, you miss a turn. Everyone else gains by your apathy, and you suffer, as you should. If you miss too many moves, you get kicked out and go CD."

"Agree with everything said. New rule has been a pain in the a$$ in all my games."

"Yo I’m gonna die before 1995 happens"

"Is this some sort of sick joke?"

That's in an anon AE IV game. (242316) I'm not in it. I have no idea who those people are. I have no vested interest. I'm just pointing out that clearly everyone there is having a miserable time and you just keep pretending that the change is totally positive.

It’s well put in this post. I read the notifications regarding “excused missed turns”, thought “yuck” & switched back to playing a few games on PlayDip where I was playing before ODC started.
I understand the motivation for change, PlayDip had the same issue & introduced “Protected Games” to address it, but this implementation looked a bit ugly & I understand the sort of reaction I read above.
Doesn’t look like a positive improvement to me, but I’m happy to be in a minority, not the first time

[jmo1121109]

I mean I'm not quite sure why everyone ignored my post stating we're working on a change to make the max delay possible for a missed turn 24 hours, and a longer term change that will remove delays entirely without allowing NMR's as a game creation option. If it's just fun complaining and ignoring that (as well as the overwhelming statistical data that showed a solution was needed for the problem of NMR's) then please feel free to continue.

[Squigs44]

I've yet to see someone complain about turn delays that uses the minimum reliability rating filter when creating or joining games. That filter works great for me. I average maybe 1 delay per game that has a minimum RR of 80%

[jmo1121109]

Changes made today: a delay now maxes out an extend at 24 hours. RR for live game players is significantly for fair for live games. A better description coming in the next day or two on the development thread.

[Kremmen]

games aren't impacted nearly as drastically when a replacement comes in as they take over a position that hasn't missed turns. Overall the stats and player feedback are showing the change as an overall win.

When a newbie replacement comes in and does something random (as they do repeatedly, because takeovers cost zero points) it is way more drastic and disruptive than all units just holding, as well as delaying the game. What measurement are you using for your claim that this is better?

Similarly, what stats and feedback show the change as an overall win?

My suspicion is that it's only a win for standard games and smaller (if then) and that for games with larger numbers of players, the annoyance factor is way higher than any supposed gain.

[jmo1121109]

Sure, so the problem is that you're pretending that new players couldn't and didn't come into games before and take over worse positions. That still used to happen (100,000+ times), it just used to happen for a more messed up position. That hasn't changed at all with the new system. What changes is how good that position is.

Previously people would NMR 2 times, get kicked from a game, the position would be trash, the game severely impacted with whoever bordered the player benefiting wildly, and in many cases the games ended up cancelled if this happened more then once in a game. Which it would, the average game had ~2 CD's per game before this change. Now people are removed without any disruption to the state of the game board and the number of games cancelled with multiple CD's has dropped to almost nothing. Which tells me beyond any doubt that people aren't as frustrated with someone new coming in as they were when countries benefited from sheer luck of someone not entering orders next to them.

You're trying to use your dislike of takeovers costing 0 points, which has been a policy for years to attack a completely different aspect of how games work. If you'd like to argue that CD takeovers should only be available to people who have completed a game, or something along those lines, that's something that I could see being a valid concern.

[pyxxy]

If you'd like to argue that CD takeovers should only be available to people who have completed a game, or something along those lines, that's something that I could see being a valid concern.

I would support adding a rule/setting where players must have completed at least one game before taking over a CD.

Related question, in games with an RR minimum, is that minimum enforced for players taking over a CD? Or is it just enforced at the beginning of the game?

[Squigs44]

If you'd like to argue that CD takeovers should only be available to people who have completed a game, or something along those lines, that's something that I could see being a valid concern.

I would support adding a rule/setting where players must have completed at least one game before taking over a CD.

Related question, in games with an RR minimum, is that minimum enforced for players taking over a CD? Or is it just enforced at the beginning of the game?

Players taking over a CD must have the min RR as well

[Kremmen]

Sure, so the problem is that you're pretending that new players couldn't and didn't come into games before and take over worse positions. That still used to happen (100,000+ times), it just used to happen for a more messed up position. That hasn't changed at all with the new system. What changes is how good that position is.

I'm not pretending that at all, but the more messed up position isn't always a bad thing.

With that change to how good the position is comes a change to how much damage a new player can do. In the past, an NMR (especially in a non-anonymous game) was predictable, especially the second time.

Takeovers costing 0 points was a terrible decision, responsible for probably half of the games that go to hell or were significantly delayed, so you are right that I don't like it. However, I'm not using that to attack this. The combination of the two is significant. Making the position that is taken over superior to what it was in the past greatly exacerbates the damaging aspects. The worst case situation used to progress from A (ally is helping) to B (ally NMRs so is useless) to C (ally is taken over by someone with <100 points and no clue, who causes chaos). Now it can go straight from A to C.

[teccles]

I mean I'm not quite sure why everyone ignored my post stating we're working on a change to make the max delay possible for a missed turn 24 hours, and a longer term change that will remove delays entirely without allowing NMR's as a game creation option. If it's just fun complaining and ignoring that (as well as the overwhelming statistical data that showed a solution was needed for the problem of NMR's) then please feel free to continue.

To add to the pluses on this with an explicit comment - the 24 hour change is a great idea, and the longer term change also sounds great (and intriguingly mysterious). Thanks to the devs for all your hard work; your work on this site is truly impressive.

(FWIW, my own experience is that this change is really great for classic games, and a mixed bag for chaos games, where the average NMR is way less impactful than in classic.)

[Squigs44]

Sure, so the problem is that you're pretending that new players couldn't and didn't come into games before and take over worse positions. That still used to happen (100,000+ times), it just used to happen for a more messed up position. That hasn't changed at all with the new system. What changes is how good that position is.

I'm not pretending that at all, but the more messed up position isn't always a bad thing.

With that change to how good the position is comes a change to how much damage a new player can do. In the past, an NMR (especially in a non-anonymous game) was predictable, especially the second time.

Takeovers costing 0 points was a terrible decision, responsible for probably half of the games that go to hell or were significantly delayed, so you are right that I don't like it. However, I'm not using that to attack this. The combination of the two is significant. Making the position that is taken over superior to what it was in the past greatly exacerbates the damaging aspects. The worst case situation used to progress from A (ally is helping) to B (ally NMRs so is useless) to C (ally is taken over by someone with <100 points and no clue, who causes chaos). Now it can go straight from A to C.

I find it interesting that a large portion of your games are games where you took over CDs that had 7 or more SCs, and you benefited greatly points-wise from these CDs. After the change, are those 7+ SC positions more or less common, or about the same? Do you think this has biased your view on the change?

[Kremmen]

After the change, are those 7+ SC positions more or less common, or about the same? Do you think this has biased your view on the change?

The change is new and I usually only play a game or two at a time, so it'd take years to answer your first question with any accuracy.
As for the second question, no, I'd never considered it. The better positions now do make takeovers potentially more attractive and on that basis I should be biased towards liking the new system. (However, it should be obvious that I don't care highly about points, given that I advocate players having to spend them to take over a position.)

[Mercy]

AWESOME changes to the way NMRs are handled! This new system is almost as good, if not better (!), than the old system on vDip.

[Mercy]

After having read some of the other comments, I see that some people are complaining that the game gets extended for countries that are almost eliminated anyway. In the old NMR system on vDip, one could differentiate between these, e.g. one could have only kicks and extends for players who controlled more than two supply centers. Something like this may be worthwhile to look into as an option, as it apparently can work with the webdip code.

[Kremmen]

e.g. one could have only kicks and extends for players who controlled more than two supply centers. Something like this may be worthwhile to look into as an option, as it apparently can work with the webdip code.

That would certainly be a huge improvement. Especially in World
games, players with <=2 SCs mostly drop out when their situation is hopeless and it happens over and over again with absolutely no useful purpose served by someone taking over. I've even seen countries taken over with zero SCs or zero units. (Prior to the recent changes.)

It would be great to remove takeovers when the player has a very small numbers of SCs, whether it was the old system or the EMT system.