Some inputs about those proposals... well let's see WHEN they'd have an effect.
IIRC, there are 2 concerns about this CYOC feature. In short:
1 - It would help cheaters, letting them premeditate and pick up those countries they think are the best for cheating (neighboring, alternate, opposite, or whatever they think the best picking-countries strategy would be);
2 - It would encourage casual cheating, because one could choose to be neighbor to someone he thinks will be a good ally.
Well, we have 2 main kinds of CYOC games: Anon-CYOC and non-Anon-CYOC.
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Let's see Anon CYOCs first.
I believe this kind is the most used, does anyone have some stats?
Also I don't have any stat, but - for the little time I've been a Mod - I'm under the impression that the few metas we found on CYOCs were actually into *Anon* CYOCs.
Anyway, noone of the first 3 Oli's proposals will have any effect on Anon CYOCs, because players and countries are *Anonymized already*.
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So we are talking about *non-Anon* CYOCs, the only other main kind left.
And probably, we’re talking about non-Anon CYOCs that are not involved in some Tournament or some SRG, because basically everyone agrees that the feature is very useful in these cases.
This could be extended to all Private games, because if someone sends me a Password for such a game without any explanations, I'd ask for them. So we're probably talking about non-Anon *Public* CYOCs only. Anyway, it's not much important. Let's consider non-Anon CYOCs as a whole, no matter whether Public or Private.
Now, about the first concern I numbered at the beginning, noone of the first 3 solutions looks useful.
Example. If you notice a non-Anon CYOC Classic was just created and you want to cheat in it, you call your cheating-mate and "Hey mate, please join gameID=xxxx as Russia. I'm Turkey and we'll play a Juggernaut!". That’s premeditation.
Anonymizing anything won't prevent them from cheating. Because they started cheating before they joined the game. It was premeditated. They’d know who they are, whether the CYOC was Full-Anon, Semi-Anon, non-Anon or Anon-in-pregame-only.
So there's only the second concern left.
We're talking about whether one of those 3 ‘solutions’ could discourage casual cheating in non-Anon (Public) CYOCs.
Mm. Personally I don't believe this be a huge issue, but older Mods could be under a different impression, if they think that non-Anon Public CYOCs are so common and casual cheating into them is so likely.
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About *casual* cheating in non-Anon CYOCs, please consider also 3 little things that might reduce effectiveness of proposals a bit more :
- Before you choose a (maybe good) neighbor, you should check whether the Variant in question might be unbalanced and how.
For example, if you're about to join a non-Anon CYOC Africa, then picking Morocco (17.1 SCs Ø) with a bad neighbor could be better than Egypt (4.5 SCs Ø) with a neighbor you think might be good.
Well, playing CYOC on unbalanced maps makes little sense already, casual cheating on them makes even less. If there are only bad countries left available, you don’t try to cheat, you join another game.
- Pregame silent strategy is fairly available for everyone in the same measure.
While joining a non-Anon (Public) CYOC, everybody knows which players are already in, hence who's out and could join, how many and which spots are left to be taken.
Everyone is free to join the game or not. You're free to leave it forever if you don't like someone in it (like you are allowed to do in any other kind of non-Anon games).
You're even free to leave and re-join it later - at your own risk - if you think another Country is better. Any the reason be, except for agreements with anyone (like in any other game, also in CYOCs negotiating before the game starts is forbidden).
These things go for everybody, so a casual cheater has a hard life, whether he joins early or late, because it would be easy to catch .
- Press-rule. In any Gunboat, talking about the game before the end is forbidden. So if you talk about it before you possibly join it or if you talk about it in pregame phase, then you're already cheating, and it's not casual cheating. No matter whether the Gunboat is CYOC or not, cheating is never casual in Gunboats and those 3 proposals do nothing against premeditated cheating, like I said before.
Since players-chats are disabled during pregame, Full-press and Global-only are the same here. Working around game messaging/press rules (Site's Rule #3) is still forbidden, so talking outside the game before the end isn't casual cheating. It’s premeditated. It would become casual cheating *****so proposals would affect it**** when some negotiate on Global during pregame. Wow.
(Btw ,this goes for every game, not only CYOCs. Indeed, I wonder why the new automatic message from GM:
"GameMaster: Please remember that negotiations before the game begins are not allowed."
gets displayed in CYOC games only, while it would be good for any game.)
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Those were my 2 cents. Clearly I believe that any of those 3 proposals would affect a very small number of games, which makes me doubt if they're worth the effort, but that's for Oli to say.
To not mention that I'm inclined to think they would be backfiring. There's a reason why cheaters usually hide themselves into Anon games. If ever, it’s the Anon feature the one that mostly helps the cheaters. Clearly it’s also very useful, so nobody ever proposed to un-anonymize games just because anonymity actually helps (and encourages) cheaters.
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tl; dr.
I think this is about whether anonymizing players and/or countries during pre-game phase would be good or damaging for preventing casual cheating into non-Anon Public CYOC games with Press.
So not that many games.
This is because proposed solutions will have no effect on premeditated cheating and they’ll have no effect on Anon CYOCs, on basically all Private CYOCs, on Gunboat CYOCs.
Aside those, no better inputs I can give.