I would just like to say that I really like the system as it is now, so there are not only people who dislike it :)

I suggest making defeats suffered from countries you pick up from a CD not on your record. I also suggest making it a little more difficult to recover a rating, as I was able to gain back 50 in less than a day.

Oli -

Please take this as constructive criticism, and not an attack.

The RR is a joke. Anyone can just pickup a couple games in a day and completely repair a ridiculously bad RR. Grand Admiral Thrawn proved that point quite effectively over the past 24 hours.

The only way for the community to know about how reliable people are is to know how many games they've CDed in combined with number of missed phases. As it stands, if I CD in 10 games, but my country gets eliminated in all 10, NONE of them are on my record, and essentially no one can prove it. IIRC, if I CD in 10 games, and someone joins them and takes my spot, those games are ALSO not on my record as a CD, but I admit I might be wrong on that one.

Basically, we don't have a reliable way to know whether people are serial game destroyers with CDs as the true CD count is masked with the current settings. Is it possible to at least keep games where someone CDs and is defeated in their "CD" column instead of in their "Defeated" column? That would at least make them show as unreliable instead of just crappy players.

Grand Admiral Thrawn -

If defeats from games you pick up aren't counted in your stats, what's the point? Everyone who needs to improve their RR would just join 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 games, get defeated on purpose, and BOOM, their RR is close to perfect again. There needs to be SOME penalty at least.

@drano: are you sure admiral thrown is an unreliable player? He Went CD in some of his games, but following the discussion he does not sound that unreliable to me, so a RR < 60 might not really express his reliability. Also 3 CDs in 80 games does not sound like a really low reliability. After all 80 games played does implicy quite a lot of involvement in this site.
It's questionable if a CD should lower your RR by 10 at all. Or if there should be another measure.

Oli -

Pardon the brevity, but 3 CDs in 80 games DOES sound unreliable to me. Especially when a good number of those games are 2 and 3 player games, which to me, doesn't really show any sort of commitment given the nuances of those games.

Beyond Grand Admiral Thrawn though (because this isn't about one person), the point is that a random person (let's just say me) could CD 10 times because I just don't care about the games, and then, the NEXT DAY, repair my RR to near perfect by just joining 10 games and losing on purpose. Is that right? Is ruining 10 games because I don't care really balanced by just joining 10 games and waiting for my country to die? Because that's what the system allows. And assuming I get eliminated in the games I quit (which is a very high probability), there's no record of me CDing!

As an aside, reliability has nothing to do with involvement on the site. I could be really involved on the site, and play lots of games, but still be completely unreliable. To me, there's almost no excuse for CDing unless you have extreme personal issues in which you absolutely have no chance to ask for a pause, or get a replacement. And I believe those issues are quite rare. If someone CDs because of a camping trip...no sympathy from me, you should have found a replacement, or asked for a pause. If someone CDs because their family member is in the ICU, then that's totally 100% understandable. But I can't imagine that most of the CDs on this site are because of REAL emergencies.

@Drano019 I am happy to explain the circumstances of my CDs to anyone who asks or requires it for a game. I had an unfortunate hospital visit.

Well that would mean that you have twenty bad games (of which you have toplay at least ten further, or else you will have more CDs to balance) just so you can join another five new games...I don't think anyone is really acting as depicted by you...

PS: I do not really want to defend the current system. It's not mine. It was developed on goondip long ago. But looking at the stats it has worked quite well so far (25% open games on webdip opposed to 11% here - and non of the open games here have a special RR requirement).
But as always there is room for improvement and this time it's even easy to implemnt if the community here can agree on some changes.

All I'm asking for is a permanent record of CDs. I never asked for anything else. I just think it's silly that if I CD, and then my nation gets defeated, it's not on my record as a CD. It's foolish not to have that. The RR isn't a tool I use anyways, as I much prefer to see missed phases and CDs as a symbol of reliability and to make my own decisions about people.

GOD - What do you mean 20 bad games and I'd have to play 10 further? If I quit 10 games, I have 10 unbalanced CDs. THen, I join 10 more, and wait to lose, thus erasing my 10 CDs. I don't even have to enter orders. Just log in to the game so I don't CD.

Grand Admiral - I wanted to steer the discussion away from you because I dont' really know the situation you were in. Unfortunately, you were just a convenient example as your RR went from 40 to 90+ in under 24 hours...which seems to imply that RR doesn't mean sh*t if it can be manipulated so easily.

@Oli,
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Why is it the majority of players manage their games through great adversity including all the ups and downs of real life without it causing them to allow their games to lapse into CD? I've been through marriage (wife agro) deaths in the family serious illness, hospitalizations, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, power outages, internet outages, two feet of snow, kids soccer games, birthday parties, graduations, should we even mention work or work related travel. I've never allowed a position in a game I was playing to go into CD. I don't buy the RL excuses used here. If life get's in the way, fine. Everyone needs to set their priorities, and Dip is far down the pole from family, health, work, etc. But why is it that most people manage these things and some cannot. It boils down to respect for the game and your fellow community members.

I count myself fortunate that I've been able to play on through adversity. However if I could not and wanted to re-enter a community that my actions had adversely affected, I would publically apologize, give a brief explanation of the circumstances, and ask forgiveness, while offering to prove my worthiness again. Why is this concept asking too much? Why is a guy that dumped multiple games being restored to top status in one day? I don't see where asking a player to serve a week or two of penance to prove that they are seriously committed to the hobby again, and doing some good service towards people that their failures let down in the past. And yes, I feel this way even in cases where the circumstances were absolutely understandable as to their CD. It's a re-entry process. Asking a gradual acceptance of reissued trust is not unreasonable.

@drano: You can see each players CDs now if you check their reliability in their profile. Just click "what's this" behind their rating.

Oli -

Does that number include games where they are defeated after CDing and which goes in their stats as a "defeated"? If so, can we get that number posted somewhere a bit more obvious? I doubt many people (if any) go into that link to see stats. They just look at the posted stats on the main profile page.

Oli,
if you look at G.Adm.T. 's "what's this", it says he had 5 CDs he later balanced. But his stats say only 1 "Resigned". Why not 5?

"All I'm asking for is a permanent record of CDs. I never asked for anything else. I just think it's silly that if I CD, and then my nation gets defeated, it's not on my record as a CD. It's foolish not to have that. The RR isn't a tool I use anyways, as I much prefer to see missed phases and CDs as a symbol of reliability and to make my own decisions about people."

This is a good point. I would say that a CD is more harmful to a record then a defeat, so if someone CD's that is what should stay on their record if only 1 label is possible. Though adding another column to the records called "Defeated after CD" would be an awesome addition.

So Grand Admiral Thrawn has a total of 5 CDs, and 33 missed phases (which I consider nearly as bad). I've played over a hundred games on five different sites. It would be incredibly difficult to find out how many times I've CDed or missed phases on the other sites, but I don't believe I've CDed more than once. I don't believe I'm missed more than 10 phases.

I get that emergencies keep you from playing. I've been there. Although my hospital experience conveniently happened when I wasn't playing a game. I've had other close calls and trips where I realized too late, that I would have no access to internet. I've usually been able to find a way. Not everyone is as obsessive about this game as we are RUFFHAUS.

I would strongly support a record of CDs on a players page and or an increase in difficulty to bringing back a player's RR. I could understand making a CD less damaging than 10 RR points, but it should not be easier to regain the RR than it is to lose it.

A training period for new players might be a good idea. 3 to 5 games where RR is not effected as long as there is a short notice of what this entails for new players.

It sounds that we are talking at intersections at the moment.
RRating & Stats

re: Stats it seems like people support displaying a permanent record of CDs on a persons profile irrespective of a persons RRating. Is this correct?

re: RRating I'm personally not convinced that we aught to increase the amount of CDd positions needed to restore your RRating. GOD put it plainly doing this would make
"twenty bad games (of which you have to play at least ten further, or else you will have more CDs to balance) just so you can join another five new games."

The CDs in the "what's this" - explainations only count games with more than 2 players and not live games. We track these information for about 2 years now and it's not possible to get this information from the database of older games.

It's no problem to display this information on the profile-page, create some new filters for the gamecreation or change the calculation based on this information.

@kaner
re: Stats. Correct. With a permanent record, you'll always have bad stats if you don't fix your bad behaviour, no matter how many account you create. One of the reasons why people go CD and then balance it, it's to save their stats from a "defeat". With a permanent record you remove the reason why some people intentionally go CD.

What about a reliability ranking similar to the points ranking where it shows the actual reliability percentage (not rounded into the 98+, 90+, etc) and its ranking across all players?

So something like "Reliability Rank: .9886 (14 of 962)"

"It's no problem to display this information on the profile-page, create some new filters for the gamecreation or change the calculation based on this information."

@ Oli - YES PLEASE! Let's get the total number of CDs on peoples profiles, whether they were balanced or not, and whether or not their country ended up getting defeated or not after their CD. Combine that with Mapu's "reliability rank" idea where the number of missed phases is converted into an actual decimal with no rounding, and we'd have enough information to see A) the percentage of times they miss orders, and B) the number of games they've ruined with CDs in their entire history.

Here's an idea that might work?
Why not make the rating MORE difficult, any and all missed orders (as well as missed retreats and adjustments) cause the rating to drop fast and drop hard. This appeases the more hard core members and really does show what ones reliability is. But we all know real life most certainly can get in the way and even when we try hard to stay on top of things, it can affect you. I can see why we would want a way to work your way out of this mess...but one day? That is no answer and does nothing to instill any trust in such a rating. What if you had a formula that dropped old games (good or bad) and more heavily weighted more current games? This would allow people an "out" if they get back on track, also, who cares about how reliable someone was last year? Why should his distant past affect the current situation?

I concur with Drano. The total number of CDs is an information to be displayed on the user profile.
Nobody is truly interested to know the “Umbalanced CDs” stats or the “Resigned” stats.
Those tw stats can be moved in the "what's this" page, one layer below.

Oli do you know if webdip has phases/missed phases on their database or is that something you added?

Personally I would suggest that games get created with a default RR requirement equal to the game creator’s RR at the moment that he/she creates the game…

I mean, this data.
“
Rating requirements:
Min Rating: none 98+90+80+60+40+10+ / Min Phases: none 50+ 100+ 300+ 600+
“

Now the default is:
Min Rating: none / Min Phases: none

In general, the RR requirements are really an underrated and under-used feature of this website. It is evident watching the New Games page.
If we don’t increase the AVERAGE level of RR needed to join “supposedly enjoyable” games, we don’t give a true incentive in order to teach people to play their games respectfully.

This whole conversation is pointless. If you look at people's games, you can easily figure out if they are reliable or not. Life happens, and to those who claim that they have been able to make it through thick and thin without nmr'ing or cd'ing, good for you. Want a cookie? It's entirely uncalled for to say that. All you are saying is "I'm better than you because I choose a game over life." Well congrats.

When I die, I'll make sure to keep putting my moves in so people like you don't feel disrespected.

Forgive me, I forgot a line:

If you don't want to play someone, don't. Simple.