*Also...your not you're ..>.< Hell

Someone named damian saying "Hell". LOL! I love it!

I'm going to take it, that means I wasn't clear enough.

Here's the short and simple.

I'm going to be starting an exclusive club for the hosting of live 5/min diplomacy games. These games will be passworded and for club members only.

What I'd like to know is what would make a club like this appealing to you. So I can understand what to incorporate. What would make it unappealing, so I can try and avoid any pitfalls, that would make the club less fun.

You were clear enough, damian. It was just my fun way of bumbing the thread. Damian is the little boy (Satan reborn) in The Omen, so it was funny seeing you exclaim 'Hell.'

Gotcha, well in addition to bumping it, it got me to explain what I meant by live games club.

Hurrah.

He he, that's quite enjoyable, I wish I'd picked up on that, without you needing to explain the joke.

Oh yeah, once I get things running, properly. I'll also probably be looking for some to be the assistant organizer.

They'll have access to the club email account where questions and concerns can be directed, and *fingers crossed* the ability to add new players to the list on ghosts site.

Preferably someone with a passion for live games, who has lots of the precious commodity. Time.

I think this club is a great idea. There are already several dozen players in, it's just that people need to get in the habit of using it!

I would suggest having dedicated thread for advertising the live club games. It would probably be good to have some links in the initial post to pages explaining what the club is and how to join (i.e. links to other forum threads or the appropriate tournaments page).

Also, I would suggest nominating/electing a few officer's to help assist with the administration, etc.

I want to see a live game tournament!

I was actually thinking about this the other day. Couple of thoughts and I think these were already in the initial plan but would be good to establish again.
Firstly - setting a time for a live game, rather than just seeing who is online at the time, planning one in advance and getting people involved.
Secondly - limiting to people who are not going to CD straight away. People do suffer internet problems occasionally (its led me to CD) but maybe a 2 strikes and your out rule?
Thirdly - What are the rules for joining?! I've played games with a few members already but not sure if I need someone to vouch for me or....?

pj. All your questions will be addressed shortly. I just need to finish editing the write up.

However I'll give you the brief run down.

We were hoping to run either a weekly or bi-weekly live game.

We were thinking of making it more exclusive. Particularly limiting it to high caliber players. So even when the level of CD's goes down again 150cc still has a role and does die out a third time. Rules about resigns are going to be on a case by case basis. One of the organizers will talk to the player about it, legitimate reasons will always be excused.

Rules of joining... they are a work in the progress at the moment. I believe they might end up being two or three members vouching for you.

I had no plans for a live game tourney. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen if there is enough interest.

I'm currently considering archiving the current player list and starting a new one. A lot of players on the list are inactive.

We were planning on making a dedicated thread for the advertising of 150cc games. With a link to the club page on ghosts site. Which I'm in the process of build at the moment. =)

As for assistant organizers I'm currently trying to figure out how to make there role work. I need to get them access to the 150cc site, which will require a brief conversation with ghost, I'll also give them access to the club email.

[email protected]

Still needs some work I think.

But here is the site: https://sites.google.com/site/phpdiplomacytournaments/150cc-club

I love all the thoughts but am sad that it's limited to the top 200Gr. I expect to go up this month but am currently only 601 for example and I'm sure there's others out there who would play a good live game even if not up to the standard of the top players. Any chance of a second level? allowing more entrants?

We didn't have a limit before so it like everything else is up for discussion.

There could possibly be two player lists or something. If that appeals. The limit can be canned if people think its not helpful

I think limiting the club by GR or any means other than by weeding out those who regularly CD is wrong! Those who drop out of live games as soon as they are attacked, are a scouge and really have no place in any game! However, if you are going to insist on a certain GR then surely this is not encouraging new players to the site, to join games.

This has been my experience: I have played around 20 live games since I joined this site 40 days ago. Another 15-20 had to be cancelled due to dropouts, and at least 5 of the games finished, whilst unbalanced (due to dropouts). Several games had to be reported to the mods for Metagaming and far too many continue with 1 or 2 powers in CD, while people refuse to hit draw/cancel. This overall experience means that although I don't yet have a ghost rating, I know that when I do get one soon, It won't be very good!

I am honourable, in so far that I am always going to hit cancel / draw if I see players dropout at the start even if it would benefit me to stay, as they are a neighbour. Others don't and take the advantage and go on to win or top the board. This however skews my GR

I have never dropped out of a game yet, (although internet problems did mean I missed most of the start of one game), I have 22 years exp of playing Dip. Am I not to be considered because my GR is not high enough?

I hope this isn't the case as I would very much like to be a part of it. I am utterly fed up of the live game lottery: will it be good or will it be spoilt by dropouts and CD's. I have had some great games and some awful so some consistancy by joining a club like this would be great.

+1 for everything Balaran said

I'm going to try and explain the reasoning behind that idea. See what you think.

Now this the third reboot of the 150cc club. Its been restarted and died out three times. Everytime we just couldn't get games running. Partially because the quality of live games improved on the site as a whole. Making its function unneeded.

The idea behind the GR is to give the club something special, so it can stick around, that something special is it being a venue for superb quality live games.

That was the idea behind it anyway. The second part about the GR cap, is that as sated on the site it is meant to be a guideline, to encourage members to back players that they think would add to the quality of play. The note at the end was: If you feel a player under 200 GR is good enough you are free to vouch for him/her

Essentially the reason behind the limit was to create a uniqueness from the club, so in times of good live games it still serves a purpose.

This was something I wanted to discuss with the community.
What do we want this club to be. A venue for high caliber play, or a means of trying to prevent CD's and NMRs?

Although I'm not yet in the club, and I have relatively little experience of this site. I believe there is a huge need for this sort of setup! The live games I have experienced...... see previous post!

If you have struggled to get games started, then I'm guessing it is because half the site are european and the other half are American, meaning there are 2 peak times for players to be looking to play live games!

I have played a number of different live games (at European evening times) and have found a few players who I seem to regularly come up against. I reckon a recomendation idea is best, that way you aren't making it elitist but you are removing the the unreliable players!

Does it matter if a player is only playing his 5th ever game, if he has a grasp of the rules and is reliable? I would argue not. It is just what is needed for a club that has a history of not getting gamestarts!

Surely make it easier to get a gamestart, and not harder by insisting on high quality.

If you had a number of club "officers" for the sake of a word, who were responsible for getting live games going at American and European times, then players who are suitable could be chosen from every game and given a probation period! If they mess up regular then give them the boot. But give everyone an opportunity to play and weed out the rubbish, then you will have a decent number of people in the club!

If you have 25 players in the club, then the chances of getting a gamestart at any given time are going to be small. If you have 25 good players and another 25 who aren't so good, but are relaible and are also willing to take an untried noob to get a game going, then the club will naturally grow and more gamestarts will follow.

A good way to find these players is to look back through your own live game history and see what your opponents dropout rate is. If it is under 5% then I reckon that is ok. Let them know that they are on probation and if they dropout for a silly reason then they get booted! I reckon I could find 10-15 players from my own history who could be relied on and perhaps 40-50 players by cross referring histories.

If these players were all sent an invitation to join the club then i reckon a gamestart could be achieved most evenings.

Just spent a little time going through my own personal history of the last month and found a list of 60 players who regularly play live games and have a low dropout rate!

I'm sure there are loads more that i havent played! get them all invited and make a decent size club. then chuck out any rubbish that i may not have already binned!

Of course this is just a suggestion. But i want to play a decent live game at least 5 nights a week and if no one else wants to have a go at making a large enough club then i will gladly volunteer! That is in no way to say that Damian can't or won't manage it. I am happy to help in any way.

Hi all, not to distract from the thread here but I am trying to start up a weekly game - tentatively Tuesday nights. I am looking for people who would be available once a week.

if this appeals to you, please sen when you're available consistently. Thanks.

Hey damian,

glad I found this post. Had no idea of this club and was recently thinking to ask in the forum to start something similar.

The one thing I would want it to be would that there is a requirement for Resigned/Left of lower than 1 %.

My ideas were to set it up as you would have to have this <1% resigned statistic and have been in the top 50 GR at some point.
Exceptions to that would have to be vouched for by 2 club members.
Maybe the top 50 GR would be too harsh though.

The idea would have been to be able to play non-anon games with 15 min turns (comparable to FtF games) with an honor agreement to finalize retreats/builds immediately and be (almost) guaranteed to have no dropouts, as if I take the 5 hours out of my time, the last thing I would want is to have the game broken by NMR's.
The GR cap was meant to ensure high-quality play, but come to think of it, it might not be neccessary, as the obly thing you really want is that people are committed.
I would like there to be some "quality requirement" though, like the resigned %, I think that this should be the purpose of this club. Otherwise, if you admit everyone, you can as well keep the "post your live game thread" as it would not be different.

I agree with Damian and the Wizard. if it was a club that had some exclusivity and some promise not only that you'd have no drop-outs but also people who know where stalemates are, how to work together in gunboat or how to talk quicly in full-press fast games, then you gain more than you lose by being exclusive.

also balaran, as good a player as you are, you are going to shoot up in the ghost ratings very quickly. and once you do, you'll realize why those in the higher tier are being "snobby". its because there is a real qualitative difference between higher ranked and lower ranked players... and also because you DONT want to risk your valuable GR playing a bunch of newbs who will affect it by CDing.

when I play a gunboat or live game right now, I know i'm playing russian roullette. its a massive risk, so that's why I don't do it often. but if I knew there would be only top200 + reliable players (whatever the parameters of reliable are) then I'd be willing to join the club and play games too. if there are no parameters, players like me (including me) would not.


also - I think one thing the club could contribute is to establish live game etiquette. for example. if there is one CD I will never ever vote draw but I will always be the first or second to vote cancel. why? because a 6way draw will KILL my GR for not reason. but a cancel is a valid way to restart the game.

anyways, those are my two thoughts... and I too would love to play some 15min; summer/winter finalize; full-press games like Wizard wants to play. I'd LOVE that actually.

Don't forget that the phase length can be changed. If you and six others want to play a longer-phase live game but can only commit to three hours or so, just have the phase changed until your regularly scheduled time.

I suggested to Lando that the club should be turned into a league. Have game signups, keep score, give bonus points. If you come up with some kind of schedule and rules, we can call it a tournament and I can be online to force-cancel/pause/shuffle/whatever.

I'd love to play some quality live games and truthfully didn't really pay much attention to the club because it seemed like you guys never played. But if you get some kind of structure, maybe make it competitive across games, I don't think you'd have a difficult time fielding games with seven quality players.

Just get it to a point where we can call it a league/tournament and the possibilities are endless.

@The Wizard 1% !! wow that is truely unforgiving! The trouble is you are saying that if a person's router packs up etc (any legitimate reason for CD) he must play another 100 games before he is eligable for the club!
Remember that the resigned statistic is unforgiving and will display the resigned stats regardless of whether a reason for leaving is genuine or not! At a 1% threshold even Lando Calrissian would not make the cut!!!

@Babak I may or may not shoot up the GR but as for being snobby about my GR this will never happen! It is not my style. I put the good of the hobby above my personal gain, and will always seek to encourage newer players and to educate them as to the correct way to behave and play. This is the reason I would prefer to make the club non elitist.

However, I understand that to many there GR is everything and yes I agree that playing noobs is a lottery. I can certainly see your reluctance to play in games where the players may not be "top drawer"

With this said maybe there is space for 2 levels of the 150CC club! A probationary level where players proove they are reliable and tactically sound and an elite level where the top players are sure of a good game. I do wonder though how many of the top players are likely to be online at any one time, and agree to play! I believe the biggest hurdle to cross for the club is "not enough players = not enough gamestarts = club falls apart, Again!!

Live games with top players would be challenging. Judging from the winter gunboat tourney, where it took me ages to analyze moves on the board and look for subtler hints in the Move history, it'll be insane to try and do that in 15 minutes. Being allowed press probably makes it harder. But it should be fun, so I'd sign up.

One interesting way of keeping it alive would be having a separate rating for the 150cc league games, so you have pride and position in the league to play for. I would think it's possible to, given the game-IDs, just apply TGMs system to a select set of games.

@ Balaran: We are the 1%. Occupy 150cc! ;)

I am all for the splitting the club in possibly two.
I am also all for the good of the hobby and believe it is important. Ultimately I want more people joining FtF events and this site might be a great recruiting field. But I believe that newer people as well will have more fun in these games if these games have no dropouts, and this is the biggest problem of the live games right now. True, the more unforgiving the cut-off the smaller the player base, but also the fewer CD's.
The tactically sound doesn't matter that much to me, you always find stronger and weaker players everywhere and by playing a good game with them, explaining them within the 15 minutes why your strategy is sound and if you do a better job than your opponent you deserve a good result. I've done that and taken others by the hand, sacrificing a better result, and I have also stabbed them, depends on the situation. I just want there to be commitment to play it out.

Me personally, I would like to play "PPSC-no-solo" games with players there to reflect FtF play. That would require players though that can agree to play for PPSC but not let someone solo (akin to some PPSC scoring system but should someone solo everyone else will receive absolute 0) NOTE: that does not exclude using threats to let someone solo as a diplomatic tool and actually doing that given diplomatic circumstances is fine as well, I just wouldn't want someone to help another person solo for the additional points he would get out of a strong 2nd. I don't care about points or GR, but I don't like committing 5 hours to a game and having it screwed because someone decides there is something good on TV or because he is down to a 2 center power and doesn't want to play it out.

Well lets look at what you have and see if it is enough to run with.

On the old members list there are 44 members. 15 of these have resigned percentages over 1% some of them are 8-10%. Of the remaining 29 3 have not logged in for 3 months or more leaving just 26. I would be willing to bet that with just 26 names you cant get one gamestart every week for a month!
It is just too small. previously it seems 44 was not enough! My own estimate would be that you are likely to need 100 members + in order to get a game start most evenings. This must mean relaxing standards and letting those with previous CD's play on the understanding they they are good ;)

Those who have been regular dropouts in games can be spoken to and given the chance to change there ways. If they are told why it is such poor form to drop out then there is a chance they won't do it. Let's not just write these people off! They were sufficiently interested to join the site and sign up to play a game or two. If they drop out of games then maybe it is the just as much our fault for not welcoming them and explaining what is expected!

Some people are just ass holes and will always behave that way, but I am not the sort of person to write them off, and give them no further chances, especially when my own starting experience on this site was so poor!

If a 2 level club was agreed upon, I would be happy to recruit for and run the 2nd level. The top level could then use it as a recruiting pool! taking any players that it felt were good enough. It may seem over complicated but otherwise I strongly doubt there will be enough top, reliable players to get the club going again!

You cant have an elite support without the grass roots level.

support should read sport! Duh!

1% resigns is a bit draconian. top-50 GR is as well.

Honestly I don't think we should have any resign/GR restrictions -- if we keep the vouching system, we'll be able to include any top-50 GR/<1% resigns folks as is, and we'll also be able to make exceptions for people below that which still deserve to be in.

Alternatively a two-tiered group would be workable.

Alright. I'm just going to sum up my thoughts. There is way too much for me to address everything everyone said so I'm just going to hit the major themes.

I'm inclined to be slightly more generous with resign rate, because things do happen. My preference is 0 resigns.. unless they can explain there resigns sufficiently.

Cancel if someone has to drop, for a severe reason.

I'm perfectly willing to run a two level club. We could call them 150cc and 50cc. Or something like that. Stick with the engine reference.

I'm vehemently against the PPSC -no solo- idea for points. I think that SC count is completely unimportant. Unless it is 18, or 0.

15/min or 10/min is perfectly reasonable as a time length particularly if we are playing high quality games. It's hard to really arrive at high quality play, in incredibly short phases

re: league.. I can understand the appeal of a weekly league-esque game ...yet... I'm not sure that tracking points in entirely necessary. Still I'm open to options.

Finally it is already difficult, even with multi's to get games going every evening, I think trying to make that an initial goal of the club is highly impractical.

Anything people want to say. Or should I do some cleaning up, start recruitment, and generally get things going.

Top 50 GR? Really? Well then I'm a member who is getting kicked out. Be real.