Winner Take All allows for an emphasis on winning and draws since the draws still divide all the points Within the hobby history that is the way the hobby developed and looked at the game in North America.

The Points Per Supply Center is an extreme -de-emphasis on winning in that there is almost no difference between winning and coming in second with 16. Further there is no incentive to stop someone from winning and quite the contrary there is a center grab incentive which accelerates the solo win.

All of this plays on the minds of those who are influenced by the point system which I might take a guess at as high as 50 per cent of the longer term players here or as low as 33 per cent when you look at the repeat players(10 or more games) as opposed to the one off new players just trying things out.

Now in the FtF hobby the small difference in winning and losing is found in only one place historically and that is Australia, There was a scoring system there that basically gave one point per center and then 1 point for winning. That system is highly out of favor world wide and even Downunder these days but it may have been in vogue during the formative period of the scoring system design.

There are a lot of different philosophies in making a scoring system with most being a mix of them, with heavy influences of game culture as well as location out look and history but that would be an entirely different forum subject and not one dealt with a short post.

i wud be interested in 1.

I would submit that a ppsc game is more favourable due to the fact that playing well is rewarded while in winner take all someone could spend many manhours valiantly defending himself against near insurmountable odds and come away with absolutely nothing to show for his efforts.

Edi, I would be very interested to here more about the history of scoring systems and the different varieties that have been tried and are currently being used.

It seems to me that the way to go would be along the lines of a rating system similar to what is used in chess rather than a points system. Of course the difficulty in a rating system is how do you differentiate between wins, draws, survival, and elimination? You would need a very good formula to accurately account for this.

I think that WTA make sense where you can reasonably expect to have players with comparable level of skills around the board. As Sioraf already mentioned, it is very unnerving to be blocked between 2 good players when the other 5 are rookies or even going into CD...

How hard would it be to throw in a 3rd scoring option (called Balanced?) which is 1/2 WTA and 1/2 PPSC. It would make games with unbalanced skill levels a little less harsh than WTA but help discourage the early and long-term alliance that sweeps the board so often in PPSC.

There is a listing of 50 scoring systems that were used in multi round Face to Face Diplomacy tournaments here:
http://eurodip.nuxit.net/php/scoring/scoring.php?lang=An
This is also the site of the World Diplomacy Data Base for Face to Face events.
http://eurodip.nuxit.net/php/scoring/scoring.php?lang=Ang
The presentation and the sorting including player match ups is rather interesting and something to consider building on if there was to be a robust change to the database handling of results here or elsewhere.

what kind of scoring system do they use at the national championship conventions?

National Tournament Championships vary fairly extensively around the world.
Look at the listing above.

Europeans tend to have supply center ranking bias. For example they will end the game in 1907 and who ever has the most centers is considered the winner. The points assigned are such that the player with the most gets a bonus such that any position which comes in second will not have as many points as those that come in first.
In North America there is more of a draw bias than a ranking bias but that is also changing though US games tend to have less of a game year deadline than European ones.
Downunder they are more center point bias than draw based.
Additionally it is nearly universal that in the case of a solo everyone on the board is give ZERO points so that there is a massive incentive to stop the leader rather than do the center grab as you see in a Points Per Supply Center system here.
Take a look at the systems and you will see a massive difference in approaches, philosophies and complexity.

let's start this wta game please

I always play to win. I think your win/draw/survive percentage is more importance than points. But I like points as they let me play big pot games with more established players.

So from a points perspective I often like to play PPSC. The issue of CDs can give some players an edge that can make it harder to stop them from winning. But mostly, I'm pretty confident I can come out of a sphere war (so as England I would team up on either F or G with the other one) and I'm pretty much guaranteed a points reward rather than having a decent shot at one. Its not that I won't stab my partner and try to win or whatever, its just I don't like playing to 16 and getting nothing.

That given, one of the best games I've ever played was an ultra paranoid WTA game with two really early leaders turning on eachother, and both getting eliminated by two victims who set up a 17-17 which eventually was broken for the win.

I made a 140 total point WTA and won it... so.. it worked for me lol yay

The largest 2 games in the whole Diplomacy history are WTA.

It's popular, but only with the big guns.

The problem might be related to the Leagues and the coming Grand Festive Tourney... Most of the regulars are heavily loaded with games and a lot of those are WTA.