^ that change was actually contributed by y2k- but it wasn't until Christmas that I got around to properly testing and applying it.

Not listed: several moderator tool improvements to help keep multis and cheating down.

@jmo - I have at no time insulted ATC who I like and get on with and, having designed and run website for myself I KNOW that there is a considerable effort that goes into creating and maintaining it. I agree that insults are a distraction from the main issues. I won't let anyone, even by implication, accuse me of insulting that great and good man. (Unless of course I mean to, like pointing out he's an Oz, so of course his thinking's upside down!)

@bas/ATC My whole point is that I believe there are no LARGE communities vocal enough to post on the forum - for any method. Consequently, without the capability to select PPSC, there never can be any way that you can legitimately check the considered opinions of the candidate methods. Effectively, by removing PPSC from the ballot paper, you've disenfranchised those who like it through a coup de main.

The argument that by removing the option, people who like PPSC might come to like the other methods of scoring is something I struggle to not overreact to. For 10 years I was a librarian; eventually v senior and continually had to fight against the literary crowd who wanted Romances, SF and other genre fiction in the A/Z order on the grounds that, so that, like weary butterflies with a penchant for shit, the punters might alight on the true shining flowers of literary greatness like Dickens. Bah!

If the bloody choice isn't available, then you can't make it. At least be honest and say "We who run the site think PPSC is an abomination, a historical betise, that needs to be eradicated from the Diplomacy continuum". You have the right to make that choice, while I (with no other avenue of complaint) perforce have to make my point here. To pursue your analogy, I am like the curmudgeonly old git in the corner who's seen and tasted all the brews for years (shit, he's even owned a brewery and a run a pub!) and knows that this bright new fizzy stuff ain't the same.

@Chumbles, if you didn't insult him then you don't need to address my post. But in the last 15 pages of posts there were too many insults for me to call out every offender.

Let me just clarify my stance on this for thorfi and anybody else who may have over-read what i was talking about. My arguements before were just about debunking that we "need" in order to build up new players, which we don't.

As a more competitive type player, yes I do look down on PPSC as a scoring system. I also tend to stick my nose up towards gunboat games as well, but that doesn't mean i'm banging the drum that either need to be done away with since frankly neither of them really effect me. If people have fun with PPSC i really don't care if it's kept around since players who favour it tend to have a disadvantage in climbing the GR (since even solo's end up having to share the pot) and since that's what i use for measuring rank i don't mind it.

However..

If we want any kind of credibility as a competitive Diplomacy site at some point we do need to keep some amount of consistency over how we measure our wins. We've already had two different ways of how we win (PPSC and WTA) and two different measures of how we rate our players skill (WebDip points and GR). And now we want to yet another scoring system. I really don't think keeping them all is the right answer.

I think we need one system for those who want to be competitive and then something for those who want to be casual. Is SOS better then PPSC? No idea yet, like i said haven't played it yet and probably still going to continue to favour the DSS. Quite possible the SOS and DSS may be more problematic in the fact they are both more on the competitive side of the fence and have a stronger influence on inconsistency due to their higher overlap. May be wise to have a transtionary period with all three in circulation before deciding which one of the three systems ought to be put on the shelf.

Take PPSC games out of GR. Problem solved.

(Or, rather, refrain from putting future PPSC games *into* GR.)

No argument from me there.

...it's just that none of the people that are criticizing PPSC seem to understand it's utility.

That would be like if illiterate people started criticizing, and then wanting to ban, books. Actually, I like that analogy.

This removal does serve to undermine faith in the current leadership. They've removed something that a healthy chunk of the player-base enjoyed, which wasn't causing any problems. It just creates an impression that the current staff don't really understand what they're doing.

It *appears* that most of the people criticizing PPSC understand its utility: (1) to allow players to get points from a solo, making solos less bitter for survivors; (2) as a corollary, to make soloing easier since big countries can promise points in their solo as a carrot for alliance; and (3) that some people enjoy playing PPSC and wouldn't enjoy playing unranked/SoS. But the critics view (1) and (2) as negatives, no one has presented adequate arguments that they're positives, and the mods apparently aren't sure how big of an issue (3) is. Taking PPSC out may have been premature given this last, but that's a separate issue.

If you see some additional as-yet-unstated utility to PPSC, feel free to explain it here, instead of simply complaining that Nobody Understands Your Pain.

ETA: I would go so far as to say the arguments that (1) and (2) are negatives have been consistently stronger than the reverse.

"Take PPSC games out of GR. Problem solved."

This is exactly what we've done. The intention is that the needs of players who are interested in the unique incentives of PPSC (ie, letting solos happen) will be served by unranked games.

That is a mis-representation of the merits of PPSC, A_Tin_Can.

Are point distributed in unranked games based on draw or win?

There is no point distribution in unranked games. At the end of an unranked game you get back the points you staked, that's all.

then lets change that, and those who value points can get their fill with unranked games

ATC, I think it's fairly clear that's not what I meant. Leaving PPSC on the site, while removing it from GR, allows it to count for D points (the incentive a casual player values). Unranked has no perceived scoring incentives at all, which is a different sort of experience.

@Lethologica
(1) Making other people's solos less bitter has nothing inherently wrong with it.
(2) However, making soloing easier is definetly a problem with SWS. I wish there was a good way to amend SWS to lessen that effect, but I at least don't have enough time to develop a new diplomacy scoring system. This is certainly the main downfall of SWS.
(3) There's our big problem. Neither SoS, nor unranked can be replacements for SWS.
First of all, DSS is closer to SWS than SoS. DSS and SWS share a common point distribution during a draw, whereas SoS does not. Also, neither SoS, nor DSS share SWS's point's distribution in a solo, which is what we're defending it for.
Unranked can never replace a point distribution type. They are fundamentally different systems, with fundamentally different goals. Points, while not necessarily a complete representation of skill, are a status symbol on this site. It is arrogant to assume that players who play SWS don't also want to improve their rankings, just because you consider their preferred method of play to be inferior. People who enjoyed SWS as a point system should not be expected to go play unranked as a replacement.

(4) You forgot one, Lethologica. Variants, Live games and, to a lesser extent, GBs. SWS, in my opinion, is the best scoring method for these more casual game types. In my experience, these types of games are much more unbalanced than vanilla dip games. Live games have a lot of problems with NMRs, variants can have quite unbalanced maps, and GBs don't have such an intensive diplomacy aspect to balance out the game more. For Classic, Vanilla diplomacy, I agree that DSS is the best system, but not for the other ways to play.

Dang. I got like quintuple ninja'd while writing that post. I had do go do something else in the middle.

Yeah, you need some kind of score to make the typical game interesting even if it is for the casual player. Unranked become throwaway games if you don't have a set goal established. They have their purposes, just not standard public games for social players.

Unranked games are terrific for friends games. Theres occasionally tournaments where the motivation for it is a complete conflict to ranking incentives which makes it a challenge to decide which to prioritize. It's great for cross site games where you invite some guys with a 0 GR who totally would decimate your ranking should they win. Stuff like that.

@A_TIN_CAN

bro, that's like your fourth time attempting to articulate our side of the argument and bless your heart for being that patient, but you don't understand our side of the argument. Can you please put PPSC back?

@Peregrine Falcon--damn, I keep forgetting the "and also variant game modes" part of the chant. Amen.

@VillageIdiot--nitpick, inviting a guy with 0 GR will not decimate your ranking if they win, any more than inviting peterwiggin would. GR is "put X% of your GR points into the pool, get some fraction of the pool back according to the game result," where X is a constant no matter who the other players are. So inviting a guy with 0 GR makes your win/draw give you less GR, but you can't lose more than you put in.

It's got to be hard for purists to see the abuse of their game happen every day on this site via PPSC. I'm just saying, I understand and feel your pain. Even if I completely disagree with you, I _understand_ why you felt the need to snatch PPSC away from us on a dark Christmas night when no one was looking.

Don't try explaining the GR math to me unless you're going to be incorporating some form of muppet and a catchy song, otherwise my eyes will just glaze over

@A_Tin_Can: C'mon. I've seen your code. You're better at logic than that.

Saying that "Well, people who want PPSC games should just play unranked" is about as logical as saying "well, people who want to play poker for real money should just play with counters and no money instead".

It's straight up broken logic. It's *Points* per supply centre, not "no points regardless of what the outcome is" (which is what unranked is).

Aside from that, clearly the several people who've repeatedly spoken up in favour of PPSC don't think that unranked games are any kind of reasonable replacement, or they'd have quit talking by now and just started playing unranked games.

If you hate PPSC and want it gone because you think it makes the site terrible, fine - but please don't try to justify it by making fake excuses that something else is magically going to be a suitable replacement.

@Lethologica The arguments that (1) and (2) are negative points are coming from people who don't play PPSC. Clearly though the group in (3) thinks they're positives. Also clearly there are more people who don't like (and don't play) PPSC than the reverse - so obviously there are going to be more people making the argument that (1) and (2) are negatives than the reverse case. That doesn't tell anyone anything other than what we already knew, which is that "PPSC isn't that popular".

I should further note, I don't think anyone who's spoken up about wanting to keep PPSC as an option has said "please put it in GR". They just want to be able to play it with points, as they've been able to for, well, I dunno how long.

@ATC - apologies for the accusation of "fake excuses". That was a poor choice of word on my part, and somewhat insulting.

To be clear - I rather like the new SoS scoring system, and the unranked games are excellent. My objection was that people who like PPSC are being told that the new stuff is somehow equivalent.

@ATC, tonight, you are going to have three visitations from three Christmas spirits.

First will be the spirit of PPSC past, who will show you people having fun and enjoying themselves on this very site whilst playing harmless games of PPSC while you stand aside, glaring and angry that anyone could possibly have fun without you.

Second will be the spirit of PPSC present, where you will see a vision of Tiny Tim, sad, and crippled, his family broken by your choice to steal their PPSC away from them, so they can never laugh and play again.

Third will be the spirit of PPSC future, where you will see your own grave stone that will read, "Here lies ATC, whose one accomplishment in life was to take fun and good times away from those who played variant rules."

Holy shit dirge, would you stop being an asshat and approach this with some semblance of respect?

"A Co-Owner can be contacted at [email protected], if you want to appeal an admin or mod decision."

A_Tin_Can didn't just make this decision on his own. If ppsc was turned off it was discussed significantly internally. If you don't like the decision then take stop bitching here where no one cares, and send an email to the co-owner. Explain nicely, using your big boy words (I'd recommend against calling Zultar Hitler, etc) and tell him why you want PPSC back.

@Everyone else who wants it back, send a well reasoned email on why you think PPSC should be allowed to Zultar or the mod team. Odds are you're going to get a way better response then by complaining here.

Out of curiosity, I remember that back in the day we had GR for WTA, GR for ppsc, etc. so that you could specify the GR that was of interest to you. I am in no way complaining, but I am curious as to why that was stopped?