THIS IS THE BEST NEW FEATURE EVER.

Hiding the online/last seen indicators in public games has come up before, and it's something I'd like to do (it's the reason that I don't tend to play public games, either - I don't want people to feel like I'm ignoring them if I'm quickly checking the game from the pub or whatever).

A problem with it is that I don't want the game creation page to get too crowded, or for games to get too much site specific lingo. Each feature (like hidden draw votes) adds a new acronym to game advertisements - we're already seeing WTA GB HDV games advertised. This is of course absolutely fine, and what we expect - but it's not necessarily clear what it means to new users.

Having a ton of options isn't always a good thing If you've ever played a game on the judges, even if you're an experienced diplomacy player, you'll see what I mean. On the judges, you can't really tell what each option means, even on standard classic games (SMART_CD? FTF_PRESS? That last one probably doesn't mean what you think it does). We want our site to be welcoming to new users - many of whom will have already played Diplomacy before, but won't know what WTA or PPSC or HDV mean.

For absolutely new players - well, Diplomacy is hard enough to break in to as a new player - adding options that are specifically about our site interface isn't going to help that experience.

And of course there's the problem of agreement - if we have 1024 possible combinations of games, then it's going to be harder for people to find games they want to join - especially with a user base with very strong opinions like ours :)

Having said that, I think hidden online/seen status is a great idea, and I also think that some users will still want to have games where the online/seen status is shown (for many reasons, including jmo's objections). So, we can't just remove the seen message from all games. I can't decide whether it should be a game option, or whether individual users should have an option on their profile to disable their online/seen status (which would mean you'd get games with seen/online indicators both shown and not shown - not necessarily ideal). Comments welcome.

We get a lot of suggestions - from the suggestions that we think fit with the site, some suggestions make it straight onto the todo list, and some make it on to a "that sounds like a good idea, let's think about it to work out how it should work" list. Both hidden draw votes and hidden online indicators are examples of the latter.

We actually considered three different models for HDV, before deciding on this one. A *big* advantage of this model is that it's easy to understand - nothing changes in the draw process for the site except whether you can see other player's votes. A lot of thought goes in to the changes we make - and sometimes we only discover things after release (for example, we're seeing more players than expected try to use "pause" or "cancel" to signal their intention to draw - something that is against the site rules. It's not clear yet whether this is a problem that requires software change or not). I don't intend to make changes to HDV until we've seen it in action for a while.

Someone above said something like "well, why not have all possible options and let users choose?" - but the argument above is the same. At some point, we're getting diminishing returns from adding extra options - especially as we've got bigger wins to be made elsewhere.

And, as always, we are open source - if anyone knows PHP/MySQL and wants to help out, we'd love to have you on the team. Email [email protected] if you're interested - or take something off the "soon" milestone on the github issues list.

In a true anonymous game, yes, the green dot/online status doesn't matter because nobody knows who is in the game. In a semi-anonymous game, it defeats the purpose of having a semi-anonymous game.

If green dot/online is not disabled sitewide (as I think it should be), then I think individual users should have the ability to disable it via their profile pages. Then it doesn't clutter up the game setup options. If people want to set up a game where having your green dot show is a game parameter, they can agree to it in advance and all participating players can set their individual toggles to enable. That's no different than a game where everyone agrees to speak in rhyme or consistent with their country's stereotypical accent.

I have no problem at all with devs not implementing a green dot disable because they're too busy (since their time is all volunteer on this free site, thank you very much) or because it is technologically too difficult to do. To the extent it's not happening because someone in site administration thinks it's a bad idea, then I disagree. I disagree that keeping a green dot feature is a good thing because it makes the game more like F2F (see yassem's post above for all the reasons why this game isn't like F2F anyway). I also disagree that having a green dot showing promotes Forum posting and/or people starting up live games.

First off, ATC, I think we're all very very grateful for the work you (and others) have been doing. There's been a huge increase in site development since you've joined the force and it's all been fantastic.

I think having the green dot optional for each person is less than ideal (but at least is something that I'd be happy with). I'm guessing most experienced players would end up disabling it similarly to the way that PPSC is petty much ignored. It also certainly won't satisfy players like jmo.

From my narrow view of games - I almost always play in private invites or tournaments - I really don't see more options being an issue. I don't have any experience on the judges but vDip and PlayDip both carry a lot of options and I'm not sure if that causes any issues for them.

Thank you, ATC, it is nice to hear the hiding online status idea is not just being dismissed out of hand. If it is to be an option, it should definitely be in the profiles rather than in game creation, in the interest of keeping the latter as streamlined as possible. Thanks again for all the work and for being so accessible.

ATC, did hidden draws really take THAT much thought? Surely it's a relatively simple concept?

I think what ATC may mean is that there were multiple methods for how it could be introduced, several choices to be made and there was likely some opinions/voted among the devs and admins.... Beauracracy... Ya know

Actually I don't think hiding the "online/last seen" indicator is worth it to spend any time on.
If it's an anonymous players game, those are automatically hidden anyway, right?
If it's non-anonymous, the player names are displayed; simply click on a name to open the player's profile, which also displays when they've last visited the site; or have a look at the forum, where the online indicator is always next to the player's name.
If you don't like those indicators, simply play anonymous games.

"ATC, did hidden draws really take THAT much thought? Surely it's a relatively simple concept?"

Actually just the code portion would require a lot of thought. Making sure there will be no unforeseen side effects is a large job and requires significant testing on a dev site. I know something that looks simple can seem easy from the outside looking in, but if it was that easy then all the mods before us would have coded these themselves instead of needed someone as skilled as A_Tin_Can.

I'm not sure if it has been discussed here or not. But when it comes to game creation options, there are one or two i'd love to see.

Extra press options: grey or black press both.
Limited press options: touch diplomacy - where you can only communicate with neighbours who have units within one move of yours (or units beside one of your supply centers)
Limited map view: A fog of war option - which has been attempted in variants, but has some winter bugs i believe (because the map isn't redrawn in winter, i think new units don't gain sight until fall...

The ability to see fog of war (FoW) one or two spaces from your units. Or FoW1 / FoW2 with Touch1 / Touch2

That may be a huge amount of work - but i believe is all fits nicely between Standard Diplomacy and Gunboat - and the limited information of doing things like hiding the draw vote...

"Limited press options: touch diplomacy - where you can only communicate with neighbours who have units within one move of yours (or units beside one of your supply centers)"

that sounds so niche that it's probably easier to set a game like that up by yourself.

Or get it implemented at vDip. That's the stock answer when people are looking for novel variants here.

Its the stock answer because WebDip is not a testing ground for developers. That's basically the entire reason vDip exists. The mod team is actively discussing the addition of other variants as part of long term site upgrades, but one thing I can say for sure is that we are more interested in established, popular variants rather than "niche" variants that would be more trouble to implement than they're worth.

The trouble is that from a programatical point of view, game options and variants are completely different things.

Current you can play 'standard', public press, and gunboat, ( game options) on any variant (which can easily be developed, and implemented on vdip, and then easily imported to webdip)

But you can't develop new game options in the same way - the variant system (which is great for importing variants from different sites) just doesn't support this.

However i can see that there is appetite for new game options which limit information - the mod team appreciates that preventing people from knowing about draw votes will have a signifigant impact on games here.

And i'd like to see more - BUT as game options rather than variants. ( the downside being that it is MUCH harder to implement game options, and they need more careful testing to make sure they work with all variants...)

These might be good FAQ additions:
"What is the goal of webDiplomacy.net?"
"What are the differences between webDiplomacy.net and other sites?"

I'm working on those two questions with the mod team at the moment. Once we have thought through about what we want to do for the site, I will make an announcement and we will discuss those two questions in detail.

"What is the goal of webDiplomacy.net?" "To seek the Holy Grail."

I'm here.

""What is the goal of webDiplomacy.net?"

To keep a bunch of potentially dangerous malcontents distracted via a relatively harmless hobby?

"What is the goal of webDiplomacy.net?"

To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the site; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the site

Yeah, 2WL, I didn't mean to come off as glib there. vDip is the variant based sister site - it's even there in the name. Similarly, PlayDip is the pay to play sister site - it's in the name too (I jest).

"What is the goal of webDiplomacy.net?"

"Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their SCs." -- Conan the Diplarbarian

No?

Back on topic: ATC: Hrm, yeah - perhaps my suggestion of a "call for draw" flag which *is* visible would work to stop people trying to use pause/cancel as that flag? And I guess there's no reason to leave it out for non-gunboat games.

"rather than "niche" variants"

Out of all the variants out there I would have thought that FoW would be considered one of the most mainstream of the lot of them...

What about number of players. Make it to where less than the normal amount of players are needed to start a game like Playdip. That could be changed from 2-7 in a classic diplomacy game. Ancient Med could be 2-5 where users control more than one country and some are in civil disorder. Non ranked games (another suggestion) could really fit in with this because I often find my friends and I wanting to play a less than seven player game on webDip maps like Modern Diplomacy or Ancient Med.

Bump.

@Kaner: I'd agree with you on FoW.

Touch diplomacy is a little bit jiche, though i like the idea that you can send out an 'envoy' unit, just to let you talk to another player, say you want to form an alliance with them. Of course promising that your envoy isn't going to do anything nasty would be the very first requirement...

Touch and FoW present some interesting possibilities; especially with 2 spaces of Fog and only 1 space for communications.

The main reason i include touch is that it is a communication variant (like gunboat or public press) which are already 'standard' variants...

The are SRGs of Touch Dip being played on vDip right now:

http://vdiplomacy.com/forum.php?threadID=60371

Two games have filled, and it seems quite popular, so if you want to play one I'm sure a third would fill.

What do webDippers think of my suggestion?

I don't like your idea mitomon, i think the smaller player rules for the board game are a necessary evil of real life, where sometimes it is impossible to get 7 people willing to sit playing for 12 hours.

The success of play-by-mail was largely due to overcoming this issue - play-by-email and web-games are a massive advance, and make this evil unneccesary.