I'd love an explanation from you as to why a points based scoring system should exist when points are meaningless and the system makes no sense given the actual rules of the game. We may as well implement a scoring system that awards points for most territories colored in your country's color, because that's essentially how PPSC works.

@MajorMitchell: I'm going to posit that games aren't filling up because of the holiday season when many of the users on this site are traveling to visit family. No need to start a game when you might CD while on the road.

2nd. Obviously, the concept of PPSC is offensive to you. Personally, I prefer to play a game were a survive at least gives me a crumb _even if_ it is a meaningless crumb. Right or wrong, it has been here awhile, and some of us enjoy it. I'm sorry that bothers you so much.

However, you cannot acknowledge that the point system is meaningless and then outside the other side of your mouth, use the point system as an excuse for eliminating the option of PPSC. Do you believe PPSC games somehow messed up the fairness of the point system?

Many of the arguments, lo these many years, that have graced this forum seem to involve individuals outraged that someone playing a PPSC game didn't make the moves or use the strategy they believed players should be forced to follow.

As far as I know, that problem is solved by not playing PPSC games. Simple.

The point system doesn't need to be "protected" because it is not fair or particularly meaningful anyway.

I continue to extend my invitation to you, 2nd, to explain why allowing people to play PPSC on this site creates any identifiable problem for people who don't like it.

Silence, eh.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

We're not saying there should only be ppsc
We're happy for wta to be the default choice
We want both forms, wta and a form of ppsc to be available
We are allowing he wta supporters to have wta scoring systems
They're imposing restrictions on players who want a form of ppsc
We also a choice
Ppsc critics largely want to deny us a choice we allow them

Apparently they know what's best for us and are eager to prescribe and proscribe for us, something we're not interested in imposing on them

I've been travelling over Xmas and haven't had much time to post since 23rd Dec, so here goes:

Before the recently-announced change, my position was that I much preferred PPSC to WTA. As I've made clear before, it's my view that WTA encourages shitty play, with many players never seriously attempting to win because of the consequences of losing all your points even if you survive on 16 or 17 SC. PPSC, in my view, is better because it gives people more willingness to risk going for a solo.

If I was going to play four games, I'd rather get a solo, two decent "survives" and a defeat, rather than four draws. However most WTA fanatics would vastly prefer the four draw outcome. For me, those guys lost four times, whilst I won one. For some people in WTA, a draw that increases your points feels (to them) like a win.

Hence my traditional support for PPSC.

However, I really like the new "sum of squares" scoring. It solves a lot of my problems with WTA.

I would therefore rank the three systems in order of preference, thusly:

1. Sum of Squares
2. PPSC
3. WTA

This being the case I'm going to side with dirge and MajorMitchell in this debate.

Why remove PPSC altogether, when some people clearly still want it as an option? How does it harm the site to deny us that option?

(that is "3: WTA in it's old form"... )

Gentlemen, with no identified or identifiable reason for this site overhaul announcement, we can only come to one conclusion.

It is a passive-aggressive Christmas puscht by WTA militants to deny PPSC players a place to play.

dirge,

"permanently implanted in one's rectum"
"It is a passive-aggressive Christmas puscht by WTA militants"

Your tone is unnecessary.

I don't think it's fair to say there's no identified reason that PPSC has been temporarily removed. It's explained in the OP, and I also went into detail in the other thread. I'm going to restate some of the things from that thread here.

There's a reason that wins are called "solos". No player from another site (and no FTF player) expects a solo win to be shared with another player.

We want webDiplomacy to be the best site to play classic Diplomacy. If we're to do that, then it's my feeling that we need to meet the expectations of diplomacy players globally.

We've *temporarily* disabled PPSC and provided two good on-site alternatives. PPSC is a variant- it's not described in the rulebook, nor is it accepted (or even expected outside the site).

This is about how the games are scored for the purpose of competitive ranking - no player is being told how to view or play the game, just how games will be scored for the purpose of competition. All site-wide tournaments in the last two years have been WTA (now called DSS). PPSC hasn't factored in to the competitive scene, so I think it's reasonable to stop treating it as a competitive scoring system.

You said that points don't mean anything, which is a fairly common view. However, the way points are distributed has an effect on GR (which many people do care about). This is appropriate because it would be a bad experience if we had games with two different scoring incentives going on in them at once. This is why we asked Valis to use unranked games for the upcoming Local Tournament - because he's using the rank-based Carnage system for scoring, which isn't currently supported by the site. We don't want people to be choosing whether to play for GR or play for the tournament points.

It's not about pushing an agenda. It's about being clear about how games are scored for players who care about points and rankings. It's about improving the site by adding two other systems that mostly cover the needs of PPSC, and removing a system that confused new players and caused surprises to experienced players from outside webDiplomacy.

Sharing a second place in a solo is still a thing that you can do in an unranked game - but, (if this change is permanent) we're saying that it's not going to be included in the site ranking system(s). This fits with the current site culture - no-one has been calling for PPSC tournaments. No one is telling you how to play your games.

Again, this is a temporary change to see how things go.

As I said in the other thread- to those who say "why not keep it anyway?" - we're planning to keep game creation as simple as possible. We don't want the create game page to look like an airplane dashboard, which means we don't want multiple options that cover essentially the same needs.

As other users have pointed out, SoS covers some of the same needs as PPSC, and importantly it is also a well-understood scoring system outside the site (same with WTA/DSS - it is described in the Diplomacy rulebook).

It is the hope of the team that with unranked and SoS games, PPSC will no longer be necessary. This is an experiment to see if removing it is an improvement.

That ending is misleading - it sounds like I said SoS is described in the Diplomacy rulebook. It isn't (although it is popular - it's used for the World Championship in Chicago this year).

WTA/DSS is, though.

@ATC

The world Championship is held in Chicago? Is it open participation or invitation only to compete? Also where can I find information on it? This sounds dope.

It is dope!
http://www.windycityweasels.org/wdc2016

I'm planning to be there! Hoping to meet many webdip players- you should come!

(And yes, open invite. Run by our very own JimTheGrey).

Windycityweasels.com

wickedweasel.com

Sweet, I'll be there.

I totally agree with Jamiet99uk's analysis. SoS seems like a good way to score games and probably means we can do without PPSC, which was vastly better than WTA.

It's also fine that there are external factors that mean that those running the site want to change things to conform to other standards, but to say "This is an experiment to see if removing it is an improvement." is just ridiculous. It's not an experiment that you can determine any worthwhile results from. Remove an option that many people use and you have no way to tell whether it's an "improvement", because nobody has the choice any more! Having all 3 scoring systems available and seeing which ones are used the most makes sense. Removing one and then pretending that you will be able to tell what players think is the kind of totally unscientific manipulation that some politicians use.

"Removing one and then pretending that you will be able to tell what players think"

That's not what's going on here. The forum, email and PMs tells us what players think (though forum is best). We canvassed opinion before and after making the change, and we will continue to do so.

Perhaps experiment is the wrong word, but the point is that we believe that the new scoring systems successfully replace the old (with the exception of one or two users who are likely to be disappointed, but you can't please everyone). We're going to trial it this way for a bit, and see whether there's any effect on total games.

Another trial we had is putting the live game indicator on top of the forum - it had a dramatic positive effect on the number of live games, and so we decided to keep it.

"any effect on total games." or other consequences that we hadn't previously thought of.

It's not an "experiment" in the science sense of the word, and if you're expecting us to run the site based on rigorous science, then you're going to be unsatisfied.

For example, simply adding a new system and seeing whether it's used more than either of the two old would be a poor experiment. A better one would be to assign a scoring system at random, and see whether people change it. But even then, you're going to run into bias from the established expectations.

We don't have the time to run the site that way, nor do I think it would be a good use of our time if we did.

I think that the replacement of PPSC with SoS is for the best. It puts incentives and objectives in the right place, which are first and foremost win, and secondary if that is not possible, prevent anyone else from winning by drawing.

SoS is a great way to incentivize having a high number of SCs without placing the incentive over the first 2 objectives. PPSC was faulty in this aspect. And to a certain extent, so was WTA. a 3 way draw between someone with 17 centers, 15 centers, and 2 centers should not be scored in the same way as an 11-11-12 split.

Personally, the only negative thing I can say about SoS is possibly the scaling. I've finished 2 SoS games so far and the scaling is perfect with draws where the SCs are about even, but they get worse as the difference between the powers' SCs increases:

For example, my first game I finished with the most SC's at 14, with the other two coming in 11 and 9. The disparity between is not that large, but I ended up with almost half the pot, about the same amount as the other two players combined.

Again I think SoS is the best scoring system, but I think the scaling could use some tweaking. The reason is that right before the draw, England demanded that I yield SCs to them or else he was going to throw the game. I called his bluff of course, but I believe he made this demand because of how few points he would get in the draw because of the scoring system.

I think that a perfect scoring system would be a Points-Per-Supply-Center in the case of a draw, but is Winner take all in the case of a solo. That way the scaling is linear and there are no crazy demands of people supply centers to even out the board.

I think we should get rid of all scoring systems and only use Carnage.

Actually, many people in face to face believe we should get rid of all scoring systems period.

@2WL That's also a scoring system...

I believe that scoring at all is not within the spirit of the game. When people play without any preset scoring mechanisms, they can decide for themselves how they should play the game. They can go for the solo, or second place, survive, or draw. Whatever they believe is best, works for them. There is no outside system forcing them to play in a specific way, no meta-gaming. This will never be possible on webDip, even with the addition of unraked games, simply because points will always be a form of prestige.
Since we can never truly play within the spirit of the game, eliminating options for players who have found a meta-gaming system that works for them, in my view, brings us even further from the spirit of the game. Forcing players into your box that you believe is the greatest system is at best just simplifying the meta-gaming to one system.

I think it helps to see our change in the light of the discussions in the world wide Diplomacy scene as well.

Part of the idea behind the direction of webDip (or end-game as one member once put it), is to become the online home for competitive Diplomacy. Necessarily, this means interpreting what happens in the global Diplomacy community as to what "competitive" actually means. Which isn't simple.

There is *tons* of discussion going on about scoring systems all over the Diplomacy community. And there has been for decades. As JimTheGrey already mentioned, they're considered a necessary evil. There isn't some gold standard of the World Diplomacy Association as to what scoring system is "best", and like Jim says, it's a pointless discussion anyway. And how the rulebook is interpreted into scoring systems varies wildly. Some tournaments use Carnage, some of them use SoS, some of the use C-Diplo, some use ManorCon. However, none use any system that splits up solos like SWS/PPSC does, for the main reason that it's actually contrary to the victory conditions stated in the rulebook.

Our choice for SoS as newest addition is not accidental. As Jim mentioned, it will be the scoring system of choice for this year's World Championship. So if you want to test your skills in the system used on that level (who doesn't!?) then SoS on WebDip is a great way to get comfortable with the scoring.

Judging from the players on the face-to-face scene, we have good reason to believe that this course will make us an (even more) attractive choice for them. If all goes well, this should be visible over the next few months. As such I'm sure we'll revisit this topic soon enough.

@TheMinisterOfWar: The choice of SoS as newest addition is totally understandable. The choice to remove PPSC is less so. Personally, I find standard Diplomacy rather boring. I play mostly variants and I am not convinced that another scoring format is better than PPSC for all game types, especially for World Diplomacy IX.

"I play mostly variants"

For some time, webDiplomacy has focussed on classic diplomacy (with a couple of additional variants). When members ask whether we'd accept a new variant, the answer is usually "no, but vDip probably will".

That said, we're discussing adding one or two more - I'd like to add fog of war, and there's some discussion about including Colonial (which is an official variant). Another idea that's been floated within the team is to have a rotating cast of variants (so we only have two or three variants active at one time). I doubt we'll go that route, but it's an option that might keep variants fresh.

@Yoyo: I've considered adding a pure SC count system (eg, Cricket http://www.diplomaticcorps.org/Scoring/cricket.html ). Cricket is nice in that it awards some points for eliminations and survives, and it's mostly linear with a small bonus for being the board lead.

I don't like Cricket for tournaments - we used it at one earlier this year, and it resulted in a three way tie for the tournament winner. Having said that, squares based systems seem to result in one clear winner often because of one really good score (which means that board draw matters a lot).

I agree with you that sometimes SoS gives frustrating results. It's very popular and well-understood though, so I don't think it's a good idea for us to tweak it.

In an ideal world, I think we'd have a draw-based system (DSS), a squares-based SC count system (SoS), a rank based system (maybe Carnage?) and maybe a linear SC count system too. That may be too many systems, of course.

"I think that a perfect scoring system would be a Points-Per-Supply-Center in the case of a draw, but is Winner take all in the case of a solo."

This is, I believe, what most experienced Diplomacy players think PPSC means when they first join the site. It wasn't helped by the "worth" indicator only showing what your position was worth if someone else reached 18.

Just saw this thread.

I still strongly disagree with making WTA the default game scoring method, let alone with the elimination of PPSC. To be honest, given that much of the Forum archive (where I regularly provided a defense of PPSC) has been eliminated, I have little urge to get into this subject again. But suffice to say that this news was enough for me to finally register my vDip account. Thanks for the suggestion to pack my bags.

I will admit that "CD takeovers are [now] free" takes away a big benefit of PPSC (users basically threw their points away when they joined WTA games in progress), but I fear that this change will cause other problems.

As for the nomenclature changes, I must say that the new terminology makes the different scoring methods sound much more confusing. (I'm not even sure what Draw-Size Scoring is supposed to refer to) To be honest, I think Kestas named PPSC and WTA perfectly well. What should have been better emphasized was that these terms described the scoring system used in the event of a win, not the scoring system in its totality. That said, given that this was wasn't explained well for so long, I propose renaming PPSC 'Winner Takes Half". But then you've already changed the name of WTA, so WTH might still lack clarity.

This brings me to my last ditch suggestion: the Scoring section should be split into three sections:
1. Ranked/Unranked (which greys out the following two sections if set to Unranked)
2. Pot type (points distribution) of Won games: Winner Takes All or Winner Takes Half (click for more information on WTH); note that WTH was previously known as PPSC
3. Pot type (points distribution) of Drawn games: Split Equally or Sum-of-Squares (click for more information on SoS; note that SoS is a variant of the Diplomacy rules