The game that I lost was caused by taking over a hopeless game. I won't be doing that again, that's for sure: it took a lot of time and energy, and the rewards were less than non-existent.

@abgemacht

@1.) So instead of all your units not moving because you weren't on time to enter orders, you end up with all your units not moving because you weren't on time to enter orders... A player must save a set of orders (even all holds) before the red-X and subsequent NMR goes away.

@2.) I'd be in support of a forced temporary pause that was as long as the joining time of the game. Live games would have a couple hours to find a player before the game went on, other games could have up to ten days depending on the initial game's settings. When a player replaces the CD, the game phase timer resets and unpauses. But it has to happen at CD and not NMR. Too many NMRs are just annoying accidents and not a player wanting to quit.

@3.) So you'll only be a good Samaritan as long as their are no consequences?

i agree that if he likes that site better he should just play there. most CDs occur when a player gives up because their position is hopeless. who wants to take over that?

I'm saying that this site has advantages, the other one has other advantages. I would like for both of the sites to be better.

Defensive much?

@manganese

I understand that tournaments and friendly games could just place a check in the box that says "do not automatically replace players." But then we're just back to the old way when replacements for those games actually need to be found.

The only answer I need is what would you do if every player wanted to opt out of being in the pool for automatic-NMR-replacement? Because everyone here would do that. Then the only people being shoved into games would be those that didn't know better.

This is why I was so rude to you. Because you're so dead set on it being "solved" and your method being a "solution," that you don't actually see how terribly it would work here.

There isn't a galaxy in this universe where that site could offer this one any methods of improvement.

no offense honestly. you just havent given any of your perceived advantages of this site over the other and personally i dont think this community would embrace those changes. as annoying as CDs are i would find it more annoying if games paused every time someone missed their turn, purposefully or not. it is actually a good idea it just might take a while to find a replacement and changes the game by having that diplomacy phase last longer which could produce outcomes that may be different than the way they were going to be.
ex. a player in a 2 country alliance NMRs and is replaced. the other player in that alliance now has to worry about the new player going along with the old alliance and could create complications. almost worse than just an NMR in my opinion

@geofram:

Yeah, I was being unclear.

I play diplomacy on here, on dipbounced, on playdiplomacy and I play the old time actual boardgame. Each has it's strong points, and the main weak one here is the CD thing IMNSHO.

I find that for this particular issue dipbounced's solution is the best: you have rankings for skill, you have rankings for commitment (people delivering orders on time), tyou have a grace period that cover unfortunate circumstances, and when someone goes over grace, the game is paused and players are replaces. Not automatically though, people have to ask to join, and they have to have enough commitment and skill ranking to qualify.

And you can of course have games that actually allow players to go NMR. It's very flexible.

However, it does require that every game has a game master who does not actually play in the game themselves. Which is managed on a voluntary basis, and works fine.

But hey, I'm just an idiot. Do check it out for yourselves.

Oh, BTW: dipbounced interface is shit. But other things, as I said, work better.

@redsquirrel

Reasonable people can differ. Personally I find that NMR:s are a worse problem than the "new government" changing plans. After all, it's diplomacy, and stabs occur for a million reasons.

And worrying about the alliance falling apart is what makes the game fun.

And of course for live games it won't work, but I really don't see the big deal of a game with 24h phases and a 8h grace period get's delayed 30minutes while a replacement is found.

webDip barely has enough volunteers to replace CD's as it is, now you want to tell some of them "sorry, but you're not good enough to take over this country?"

There are 21 game's total being played on that site and as far as I can see, none of the standard games are past Spring 1901. We chew through 21 games in a weekend. Implementing something this convoluted for such a minor bug-bite at a level of quality that would be acceptable for this website is not possible.

It takes much longer than 30 minutes to find a replacement.

@mang

agreed but i think it could unbalance the game just as much as NMR, just sayin. someones motive for taking over the game could be to dick that other person over. granted that can still happen here but i dont know if im patient enough to deal with automatic pauses and waiting for replacements. that being said it does sound like a good and interesting policy.

also cool to here that you play the board game. its a lot of fun but hard to find 6 quality players to play with or even 6 people at all

@Geofram

This morning I had to replace a player in one of the games I run. I had the replacement in after two minutes.

And you are simply wrong about the spring 1901 thing.

@redsquirrel

I'm not saying pauses and replacements is for everyone.

But as I said, you can run games any way you want. If you want to run a game with NMR you can.

As for the boardgame, I find the big problem is that what to do with the players who get killed early one. That's a great thing about online games, you can always join a new one.

Oh I forgot; I don't have a problem with telling people they are not good enough to join a particular game.

But I also like the "betting" system on here.

I think not: http://i.imgur.com/fs5wN.png

You got a replacement in two minutes here or over there?

Those games haven't started. See the column where it says "status"?

Sorry, hard to understand a site that only speaks geocities.

Let's make this discussion less about whether webdiplomacy is better than dipbounced or vice versa, and more about finding a solution to the problem.

One possible solution is to allow for GM-moderated games. As I understand, this option has been considered before, and development is working on it.

A pause-on-NMR could also solve much of the annoying issues. But still, it would mean that NMRs are still part of the game.

I like abgemacht's third option. I don't like to join a hopeless game (although I do it sometimes), as it will give me a "defeat", and possibly decreases GR. However, if the only thing I'd risk is some points, I'd do it way more often.

http://i.imgur.com/RXWNP.png

@basvanopheusden I second the motion of finding a solution instead of the geofram method.

Ah see, I could have let it go there. But you don't see your half in this detraction.

I'd be in support of a forced temporary pause that was as long as the joining time of the game. Live games would have a couple hours to find a player before the game went on, other games could have up to ten days depending on the initial game's settings. When a player replaces the CD, the game phase timer resets and unpauses. But it has to happen at CD and not NMR. Too many NMRs are just annoying accidents and not a player wanting to quit.

Maybe my problem is that I don't see the point of allowing NMR:s at all.

(unless of course you have a game explicitly designed to allow them).

How does the game benefit from it?

"@basvanopheusden I second the motion of finding a solution instead of the geofram method. "

Dude, that's not what I said. You've taken my post and twisted it around to make an ad hominem argument. That's quite the opposite from constructive thinking.

How's about this: if you're under 100 creds, the game bumps you back up to 100 when the game you lost ends, right? What if you only get enough points back from NMR'd games to bring you up to 5, the minimum amount you need to get into a single game?

I mean, I'm playing in six games right now, and that's a light load for me. If I lose computer access for just three days, that six NMR's. I'd be double-banned.

I plead guilty to that.

I was just annoyed by the "Ub3r 1337 h4x0r" attitude.

+1 to Basvano for argumentative fallcy