Fasces, the WW4 game that you are referring to in the statisitics as having been solo'd 15 times used the 50 SC limit for a vast majority if not all of the solos. I'm not sure that anyone has ever crossed the 100 SC threshold. That doesn't mean it's impossible, just unlikely. Solos are supposed to be difficult, and on a large map like WW4 they are even more so.

This removes your concern that WTA games of such much leave players unrewarded. The reality is that WW4 games are almost always going to end in some kind of draw. The question then becomes how many players will agree to draw with each other. This mirrors the original game very well proportionately.

In any case, the rewards system that you seem to be advocating is not Diplomacy. A solo means absolute victory. If you allow a solo, then you and everyone else (save the winner) failed miserably regardless of how many SCs you have at the end. That is the game. That is what drove the requests to install this as a default. If you prefer an alternate reward system, then create a special rules game that does that.

For me, and I should think most other advocates of WTA, it absolutely NOT about the points. WTA is about the game dynamic, and about stopping a solo at all costs. This is how the game of Diplomacy is meant to be played. Your experience with and what you view as fair/unfair is constrained to this points based interface. For that matter fair and unfair are being used by you and others as rather subjective labels. Fairness is not a subjective quality. It's either fair or unfair. Were the rules follow? Was everyone provide the same opportunity at the start (this goes hand in hand with random nation assignments, naturally)? That's fair. Rewards are performance based results. There no "fair" in providing rewards for failure.

Maybe you never wish to play Diplomacy anywhere else than VDip and WebDip. But many players play in multiple communities, and heaven forbid someone actually play the real game on a table top with six other live human beings face to face. But if you ever do find yourself in this situation, and you think that you know the game based on a resume of PPSC game, you're going to be quickly disappointed, and very likely eliminated.

The main point of that by the way (making it 32%) was to make sure a 2nd place survive ALWAYS gives less points then a 3-way draw.

"In the classic map with standard rules, a solo will net you 68% of the pot..."

NO, with standard rules the person who soled get's 100% of the pot, the person that had been in second place is now a loser and gets zero. That is basic rules, please stop confusing the issue. He did not "Survive" he LOST. Please refrain from the wrong use of the word "survival" you simply can not survive in a loss.

"Fasces, the WW4 game that you are referring to in the statisitics as having been solo'd 15 times used the 50 SC limit for a vast majority if not all of the solos. I'm not sure that anyone has ever crossed the 100 SC threshold. That doesn't mean it's impossible, just unlikely. Solos are supposed to be difficult, and on a large map like WW4 they are even more so. "
Ruffhaus that was my point. The world map is far too large to expect a 50%+1 solo, but how can you justify to me that you having 50 supply centers and me only having 49, entitles you to 100% of the pot, especially if we started on opposite ends of the map (say you were Sichuan and I was Amazon or something), giving me little control over what happens to you.

"He did not "Survive" he LOST. Please refrain from the wrong use of the word "survival" you simply can not survive in a loss."
http://www.olympic.org/olympic-results
I think the IOC and almost every single tournament in history would disagree. a 2nd place finish is better than a defeat, how can you argue otherwise?

and geee, there you go. Who's ignorant now?

WW4 at 50 centers can be won (I am over that myself right now)
at 100, not gonna happen.

Yet while I was correct, an attempt to make me look "ignorant" was made. That person now was called ignorant and then proven to be! ...Thanks for playing along, and now we are to take your (Proven) ignorant ideas to heart????

"WW4 at 50 centers can be won (I am over that myself right now)
at 100, not gonna happen."
Tomaha, you're missing my point, let me asking it
"The world map is far too large to expect a 50%+1 solo, but how can you justify to me that you having 50 supply centers and me only having 49, entitles you to 100% of the pot, especially if we started on opposite ends of the map (say you were Sichuan and I was Amazon or something), giving me little control over what happens to you."

Haha, using a different game to prove your point?
We have one winner and the game stops when he reaches that total. In the sports you mention, second place is certainly better than last but those sports are quite different and I laugh at this feeble attempt to compare the two.

Here's an example using your own logic...
Olympic diving...
I score three perfect ten dives in a row, we know I can not be beat, the math is such that I simply can not lose, the winner is known. But they play to see who is second and third, etc. In Diplomacy we STOP the game when someone SOLO's (it's called a solo for a reason, he was the LONE survivor), we do not continue do we? The game ends when we have a lone victor.

""The world map is far too large to expect a 50%+1 solo, but how can you justify to me that you having 50 supply centers and me only having 49, entitles you to 100% of the pot, especially if we started on opposite ends of the map (say you were Sichuan and I was Amazon or something), giving me little control over what happens to you."

First off, 50 centers is too few no doubt!
Let's say it was say 80 centers???

why should I take the entire pot at 80 while you are at 79?
...because I won and you lost. Why should a sprinter win the gold medal when he beat the other runner by a fraction of a second? Why did Germany win the World cup when it went to overtime and was decided by only one goal? Because they won, the other lost. It may not sound fair, oh well, that's how it works!

And further, at 80 centers, there is no way the nation with 80 centers did not have to interact with every larger power left (yes, a tiny one/two center nation far away may not have much say...so what?) If you want control over what happens to me, then gain the power to try and take that from me, if you are of decent size, then (at 80 centers) you most certainly ARE close by, no doubt about that!!!

"First off, 50 centers is too few no doubt!
Let's say it was say 80 centers???"
Why are we dealing with a phony premise given most games will be 50 sc.

"Why should a sprinter win the gold medal when he beat the other runner by a fraction of a second?"
Second place got a prize

"Why did Germany win the World cup when it went to overtime and was decided by only one goal?"
Again Argentina got a second place prize.

I'm not saying give 2nd place just as much as first place. I'm saying 2nd place is still a high quality finish and should get a small reward.

You've still failed to answer my question, how can you justify treating a 2nd place finish as the same as a last place finish.

There IS no second place!
why must you insist we have a second place?
We have a winner and a bunch of losers...no second place.

These other sports were not played to finish second, they played to win, they never helped the other teams finish ahead of them figuring second was good enough. How can I justify second with last? Let me instead ask you where you get this idea of "second place" we have ONE winner, if he solo's he takes all. I justify it because that is how the game is intended to be played and that sir IS how it is played everywhere else. How can YOU justify a second place that frankly does not exist in this game, you are manufacturing this in your mind, it is not part of the game, it is not part of the dip hobby world, it exists only ion your mind and your need for "fairness" that is not part of the game.

Diplomacy only has win (solo), draw (equal share), and lose. Diplomacy does not have 2nd, 3rd place.... prizes/rankings. In your World scenario, if a player wins with 50 centers and does not have contact with a player who has 49 centers, the 50-center player gets the solo because they were both the fastest and first power to achieve victory conditions.

"These other sports were not played to finish second, they played to win, they never helped the other teams finish ahead of them figuring second was good enough."
When have I ever argued that second is good enough and that you should help someone win?

I'm arguing that second place, as they did better than most, should get some reward.

OK we are both at an auction bidding on an antique car. I outbid you and all others. One winner and a bunch of losers. You can feel as god as you like being second place but I won and do not need to let you take it out on weekends.

We are both dating the same girl. At one time you were in the lead for her affections but (naturally) she fell more me. Does your second place allow you to sleep with her once a month?

One winner and many sad losers... not fair but the way it is.

"Does your second place allow you to sleep with her once a month?"

Depends on her morals. :-)

Hmmm same here. Only those with poor game morals would ever allow a solo.

But morality in no way speaks to ability...

Dumb, stupid, idiotic.

Don't allow your site to be taken down and destroyed by purist gognards.

@chav - You own vDip? I thought *Oli* owned it.

Purist? So playing by the rules and standards is purist? You are calling a person who designed a great many variants a purist? One game (played by several here) a variant with improbable units and cities a purist? You call me a purist when the we4 game I designed and played here was DESIGNED to be ended by a vote... a purist? Sounds to me like someone has no freaking idea what they are talking about. If playing by the spirit of the game is purist while playing counter to the games design is not then by all means call me so. But in turn call yourself a moron.

Yes, I call you a purist, Tomahaha.

Youcanthandlethis, are you smoking crack?

Tomahaha, perhaps you don't comprehend the English word, purist. It refers to someone, like you, who has a narrow definition of how you are permitted to do something, exactly like you cannot tolerate PPSC version of diplomacy.

"poor game morals"

Are you f-ing kidding me?

I find it ironic tomaha, that one who claims changing the map and some minor rule alterations are ok, but having anything other than WTA is simply unacceptable.

*meant to say "not only ok but heavily encouraged"

I am glad that WTA is now the standard setting.

I read some discussion here whether the original board game awarded survivals or not. I'd say it didn't. I think the game was initially meant to stop only when someone got all the SC's and thus was the only winner. But the makers of the game knew that playing when you were sure you would loose wasn't entertaining, so they decided to call out the winner much earlier, namely when he has got 18 SC's, with which he was larger than all the other powers together and would win sometime anyway if the game would go on. The fact aside that this is not always true, I think this gives us enough reason to assume the original game was like WTA and not like PPSC.

With the same logic I can understand where fasces comes from. If the victory condition is less than half of the SC's, which is the standard in WWIV, there is much less reason to assume the winner would, if the game continuous, remain the largest power, and thus WTA seems to fit less in that kind of map.

A few things
Purist... one person calls me a purist because I want the game played as it was INTENDED to be played. This is not my opinion, it is simple fact and in fact is how the game is played everywhere else. Having an argument about this only shows how foolish people can be and sorry, that too is not my opinion but rather factual. I pointed out how I am in no way a purist because I have designed many games using different maps, different rules and in the game played often here (WWIV) it was designed to be won by a group determined by vote. The game is not played here the way it was designed because of ...purists.

Then someone wants to claim its ironic that I will allow such changes but not allow for a PPSC game. Yet that is not in conflict in the least, in my games the same spirit of the game is in tact. We have a winner (or even a group of winners) and the rest are all losers. How does a map tweak on a variant change the basic principal of the game? All that person did was confirm my not being a purist in the least, thank you Feces349!

And "game morals" that applies only too aptly, yes I stand by that comment 100%.
Think about it, while the statement was of course made tongue in cheek, it certainly is apt. The morals of this game are to try and win and when that is not possible, to stop others from soloing. That is how the game is designed, it is how it is played on other websites, it is how the game is played in tournaments, it is spelled out in the rules! Therefore, any who would play counter to this is playing in a spirit that would be "immoral" as far as "game morals" go (if there were such a thing of course).

The WW4 problem at 100 sc's or less than half sc's is simple. If the game were played to half SC's to determine a winner then it would never ever be soloed and it would play for 10 years. The 100 sc mark also plays a while but it too has never been won at that level and as game mechanics go, it simply never will be either. It's easy to look at the basic game and say it works for this smaller map so it must work on a larger map as well, I get that but it simply does not work that way and history shows this to be true. Any who make that claim are simply ignorant to the facts and to history. Think about that game for a moment...
The size dictates that several powers will emerge as powerhouses from each region. That is a constant and will always happen. Now you have too many large powers able to draw stalemate lines that can not be beat. Some point to stalemates as a bad thing but the basic game is designed this way. When in the standard game we have two players compete, the game will OFTEN set up the same way. Well, that is when played WTA it does.. go to any tourney and you find the overwhelming number of games all ending in stalemates. The game is set up that way on purpose, accepting this in a standard game is somehow ok but not in a larger game where the victory condition is set to an unreasonable mark.