Ruff. We always lock discussions about ongoing games. Opening a new thread on the general topic is perfectly fine, but not our task.

On your general views: I share them very much, and technichally such cross-gaming is forbidden already. But I think that your request in unrealistic, as there is close to no way to *proving* that someone is throwing the game, if he does not explicitly state so. He could be afraid of being defeated by the bigger player, or that his other neighbors will not keep to the newly forged alliance, and prey on him. Or he could be convinced of future growth that will put him on the same level as his partner again.
Diplomacy is not math, it lives from people being people.
I think there even were one or two times when the mods punished such metagaming, but as I already said: it is really hard to prove, and no one of us is clear of cross-gaming.
Except for anon games of course, I always Base my decisions and the way I treat the others based on my previous experiences. If not conscious, then unconscious, but still.
In a way we all would be guilty of cross-gaming.

I hesitate to disagree with Ruffhaus, but I must. Though I do largely agree, I have a concern regarding your solutions.

You lay out two different examples, the first being acceptable and the latter being improper, to which I agree wholeheartedly. I also agree that the best way to limit the second is through community opinion. This community has a fairly evident opinion in regards to external influence. Each game played is to be a world set apart, uninfluenced by past games, concurrent games, or any other factors. Those unable to maintain that standard (i.e. real life connections) are expected to excuse themselves from game where it is an issue.

Every member of this site knows that standard, and have agreed to abide by it. As such there are only two explanations for the behavior shown in the second example: The player had not yet realized this behavior is the same as the above mentioned behavior, or they are willingly defying the rules of the community.

This is all things you have said, but neither of these causes are addressed by peer review. Those who do not realize must simply be reminded. Those who know better will not be deterred by the measure. I think the best and most simple solution is to police your own activity. If you know that this person carries grudges from game to game, don't play with them. I don't think a public review is necessary, and would create unneeded negativity in the community.

ninja'd

Apart from that, I really can't share your negative experiences. It may be because I don't play WWIV that much, but such cross-gaming never really occurred to me as a player, but only as a mod, and even there quite rarely.

The threat of throwing a game is a significant and important diplomatic tool. Banishing players who use it would be a horrible way to deal with the problem.

If the concern is meta gaming (or cross gaming), then anonymous play would be the way to prevent it. But, meta gaming is already unacceptable, and if discovered, should be handled as a violation of site rules.

I don't think the moderators swept the matter aside, they simply enforced the policy of not discussing ongoing games. As for me, I encouraged discussion after the game was finished.

Devonian, RUFFHAUS wasn't suggesting banishing players who use the tactic in a legitimate manner. It's commonly called chainsaw,diplomacy and is a legitimate ploy.

He was suggesting a policing of sorts to seek out the metagamers. Personally, I fear this would result in McCarthy sm and Salem type results and isn't wise, but that is just my opinion.

Ok. I guess I read his post incorrectly.

I can't see how a policing effort would be better than simply joining anonymous games. It's hard to meta game if you don't know who your opponents are.

I call them bunny suicides :) or tantrums!
Sometimes the game just doesn't play the way expected and everybody just lies to you. Sometimes you get to the tipping point and what may have been a great game turns to shit and your blame is on one player whom should have but didn't... been there done that. Probably both sides [grin] yes part of the game.
When its payback from previous games that is not cool nor in the spirit of the game and needs a process to bring into line. Is that report to mods probably. Do yiu care eniugh and just move on more likely. Bigger problem intangible. ..

I am not suggesting banishing anyone. It was my recommendation that we as a community state upfront that certain behavior is improper and disruptive to the gaming environment. I am not talking about reaction to stabs, lies, poor performance, "bunny suicides", etc., that happen within a particular game. I am talking about willful sabotage of a game for reasons outside the scope of the specific event. While this may seem rare, pass without notice, and/or be difficult to prove, it is going on, and it's it's not just in WW4 games.

I continue to fail understand the absolute insistence of secrecy from the moderators of the community when it comes to rule breaking and disruptive behavior. On one hand I see the value of adjudicating controversy in private to avoid embarrassment and witch hunting. I'm not a proponent of these methods, although when the leaders of the site refuse to acknowledge that these things are a problem, and likewise refuse to state so in stated expectations of play, it opens the door for such in reaction to these unpleasant experiences.

I appreciate the opinions (public and private) on this subject, but remain disappointed by the lack of any apparent solutions. I have avoided citing specific examples, which make presenting the case much more difficult, but I will say that the events I refer to involved players who absolutely know better, and should have been above this behavior. It is my opinion that they engaged in this game throwing primarily because 1) it is not specifically forbidden by the site rules, and 2) because any frowning upon it by the community as a whole *is* punished by the site moderators. What this amounts to is the behavior of cheating, tolerated by the moderators, who in turn punish those who were cheated by mandating their silence or sanctioning their speech. This does amount to sweeping aside the issues.

Can someone explain to me why it is a burden or otherwise unwise/unnecessary to add to the rules of play some commentary stating that players are expected to enter a game with the intention of winning (i.e. playing the game)? Couldn't this simply be wrapped up into what constitutes crossgaming?


Devonian says, "I can't see how a policing effort would be better than simply joining anonymous games. It's hard to meta game if you don't know who your opponents are."

First of all you presume that this activity is limited to non-anonymous games. It is not. Yet putting that aside perhaps you should reread your comment quote above. Are you suggesting that the proper response from the community is to tell cheated players to sign up for anonymous games to avoid the game throwing? Why should players seeking a fair gaming environment have to limit their game choices because of correctable bad behavior of others?

I'm not suggesting that the policing of bad behavior is easy, pleasant, or without consequences. I am suggesting that ignoring it amounts to acceptance of it, and assures that it will continue. My solution is that in the even that that moderators cannot or will not act to prevent it, that we state upfront that this behavior is not acceptable (just as playing a game under two account names would be), and ask that people refrain from it. When I ask for peer review, I'm not talking about a witch hunt, name calling, or secret lists, which is what we will get if it goes ignored. I'm saying that we embrace the idea of a community where behavior like this is so uncommon because it wouldn't be acceptable to one's peers. This is the most effective enforcement of the rules anyway. Apparently the very suggestion of this ruffles the feathers of the moderators, who must fear their power will be usurped. I'm not advocating that. I'm looking for ways that the community can prevent behaviors that the moderators claim that they cannot see or prove, yet we know that it occurs.

The reason I posted this thread is because a moderator pounced on a prior thread that put forward the question of whether or not game throwing was allowable. The stated reason was that it involved an ongoing game, but there was scarce evidence of that, and the appearance was one of the moderators telling the community to shut up. I thought the conversation was a valid one, and one that needed to be out there. This site has a reputation for the moderators acting as all-knowing, all powerful arbiters of all things Diplomacy, and censoring threads only adds to that. What's the point of having forums at all if the community of players is not allowed to voice opinions? Are the experiences and feedback or players of the games not valid concerns to the moderators? I continue to hear moderators demand that all such matters be posted in the mod forum. In specific occurences of ongoing games, this is probably the best path. But in general conversations what this does is limits the audience that becomes aware of issues facing the site, and likewise limits the possible collection of other experiences and opinions from the body of players.

Hi Ruffhaus,

Thanks for your feedback. Since you criticized our current procedures as mod team, I’d like to react to your posts. This text was not discussed with the other moderators so I can only talk for myself. However, I believe that most points can be applied for the whole mod team as well.

First of all I locked the first thread made by Argotitan, since it wasn’t made to discuss the problem of players intentionally torpedoing a game instead of playing it as it was meant to. At least as I read his introduction, Argotitan started the thread to ask, if throwing a game ist allowed. This alone would have been perfectly fine, if he wouldn’t have connected his question to a currently running game. The answers could have had an impact on the players decisions in that game, specifically on that players whose actions were scrutinized. Therefor, intentioned or not, this thread can be seen as a tool to affect the processes inside the game, which is not allowed, since we doesn’t want the forum to be used as diplomatic tool.
In addition Argotitan’s question even implied, that the player’s actions may be against the rules. Hence the topic can be even seen as soft cheating accusation. I hope, you understand, that we don’t want any public accusations anywhere in the forum as those would probably really downgrade the atmosphere of this forum and might be even worse, if the player in question is wrongly accused.
Even though I assure you, I have no problem with the discussion you started shortly after, I decided to lock the thread for the reasons above (however, I admit, that this thread can be seen as grey area). As stated in posts above, this is our standard procedure with such threads and so far seemed to be a good solution.
I’d like to clarify, that I never intended to suppress a general discussion about the topic of throwing a game and our current handling of those cases. Those discussions are perfectly fine as long as nobody get offended by inappropriate cheating accusations etc.

As a moderator, I see my task to enforce the site rules and sustain the fun for most of players. Apart from randomly checking games and users on Multiaccounting from time to time, this is mostly passively done by reacting on players requests. Unfortunately my last game on this website is some time ago, so I can build my own assessment of the situation only on those requests, the forum and on the additional data available to us as moderator team.
That’s why I’m quite surprised about some of your statements and I am curious if others have the same view on this. For example, issues with someone torpedoing games are very rarely reported to us, if you doesn’t count in the obvious Multiaccounters and Metagamers. Because of this I believe, that most of the community (me including) shares your opinion, that reactions as described in the third sentence of your last thread are perfectly ok, even though they might be annoying for the players suffering from it.
However, based on the feedback we get through the reports in the mod forum I also believe, that the second case you described, the active and willful sabotage of a game for reasons outside, isn’t as serious affecting this website as you described. But that doesn’t mean, I wouldn’t take reports on this not as serious as other reports.
I’m also open for any suggestions to improve the current situation, though first of all I’d recommend to report those issues to us as a mod team, since handling such cases is one of our few tasks as moderators of this website.
I know, that’s done by you several times and I hope you remember the discussions we had, not mentioning the tons of intern hidden discussions that were based on those requests made by you. Noting that we all do this in our free time and handling long and complicated cases, we haven’t that much experience in, is not that motivating either, I hope I can convince you, that we take those requests serious and strongly contradict that we would just ignore the problems and punish those who address it. If our responses are a bit harsh from time to time, I’d like to apologize. But I’d also ask you for some understanding, that it is hard for us as well to give long answers and take long and tough discussions.

That’s all I want to say for now. I assure you and the other commenters, I followed and will follow this discussion. Perhaps my assessment proves wrong and surely we can discuss improvements. However, I’m quite busy until the holidays, so I won’t guarantee I will take a very active role in this discussion.

Ruffhaus, "First of all you presume that this activity is limited to non-anonymous games. It is not."

Please explain how this is an issue in anonymous games.

My understanding of Diplomacy is you can very easily tell when people are throwing games by whether or not they're playing rationally. Yes, there is wiggle room on strategic style AKA the "rock, paper, scissors" of hold, support hold, move, support move where you're trying to guess what other units are going to do and how to adapt. Ultimately, however, you have to see an effort to win.

The way you tell if a game is being thrown is if they don't even bother with the rock, paper, scissors game. As a mod, you should expect a player to describe one's strategy when things look suspicious. After the game is over, you should publish the description so fellow players know that a strategy was played.

Also, I don't buy into the grudge holding aspect of Diplomacy unless you're playing for PPSC score where you can recuperate some points or maybe achieve a partial victory by not coming in last place.

I mean we have to understand the limits of Diplomacy's realism. Diplomacy by itself is not a roleplaying game like Crusader Kings where you're trying to maintain a dynasty. It isn't like Hearts of Iron where you're trying to spread an ideology around the world. It isn't like Victoria where the goal is to accumulate prestige. It isn't like Europa Universalis where you're trying to spread religion and maintain stability and reputation.

Diplomacy is a one shot strategic military exercise. Grudge holding in case of stabs doesn't belong. Yea, you should learn from experience on whether you can trust someone, but that doesn't mean you hate the player behind the country being played.

Also, I've seen games get thrown TOWARDS stabbers where the victim feels hopeless. That's when things get totally ridiculous.

Also, as for Diplomacy not being mathematical, I have to strongly disagree. You can read this for starters: http://diplom.org/Zine/S1997R/Rosen/dippap2.html

There is a lot of probabilistic reasoning involved when it comes to anticipating the moves your opponents are going to do, and you weigh probabilities according to the expected values of successful moves. The rock, paper, scissors of Diplomacy is highly dependent on this.

Sometimes, you slam home the moves that yield the highest expected values to grab as many SCs as possible. Other times, you cover your bases and just grab a marginal amount of SCs to counter-aggression. Then, there are times in between where you call out their counter-aggression, and creatively grab a moderate amount of SCs to force them to be more aggressive.

Argotitan - chain saw diplomacy and throwing a game out of revenge for a stab are perfectly valid and not cheating. You have to account for this in your decision to stab and your diplomatic communication. Assuming a player will act rationally after you stab them is a sure recipe for failure. Players are human, after all, and we act emotionally. For every Spock or Data, you have. Kirk or Riker who.

Diplomacy is a game. Games are played rationally. The game is not a complete emulation of human nature.

(Also, I'm not complaining about people reacting to me stabbing them. If anything, I don't stab people because I'm wary about people standing up for themselves against it. What I'm complaining about are complex diplomatic situations between 4-5 players at least where you need a stabbed player to play differently, but because he's obsessed with holding a grudge, he ends up throwing the game to someone else. You don't have a chance at winning because someone else won't even play to win.)

(...and I'm complaining about those who give into others who stab them. It really drives me nuts when someone just surrenders despite how the game isn't over yet. That surrender makes it game over.

Diplomacy is not a game with an artificial "morale" gauge where you have to explicitly manage relations with other players to make sure they're motivated to stand up for themselves. The presumption is players will play to win.

If people want to roleplay in unrated games, that's fine, but that's a different situation.)

It's because it is just a game and not real that you get irrational reactions. People play games for fun and sometimes the fun is in screw g someone who screwed you even if it means someone else benefits.

The Order of Diplomacy
1. Win
2. Be part of the draw
3. Screw those who would cut you out of the draw by giving another player the solo.

Games are situations where people strategize under a fixed set of rules to win. People might play for fun, but that's coincidental.

This is especially important when talking about rated games. Ratings are meant to measure our ability to rationally strategize. We shouldn't tolerate people who screw around since it devalues the value of a rating. If people want to screw around in an unrated game, that's fine.

My two favorite hobbies in the world:
1) skydiving with clowns into a cotton candy bouncy house
2) reading argotitan's posts

Argo, I have a higher rating than you, but I still play for fun. It's a Gorram game after all. Ratings are for fun. Get over yerself.

[Slow Clap]

Handle, it doesn't matter what your rating is. You're not supposed to strive to become elite just to corrupt the definition of something for your own self-interest. If anything, elites are supposed to look out for the community's well being in general. You're not supposed to say, "I do this, so everyone has to follow my example."

In any case, people do lots of things for fun. A game isn't defined by whether you have fun playing one or not. It's defined by what you do to play it.

Argo, what was your point again? Please don't read this with any malice, I am simply confused how we arrived here.
I remember that this thread had once been about throwing a game, of which we quickly determined happened for two reasons (in and out). Now we appear to be talking about the reasons to play games.

Argo is arguing that there is never a reason for chainsaw diplomacy. Argo lives in a purely logical world devoid of emotions and thinks games are purely about the end goal and doesn't realize games are purely for fun for some of us. I have enough pure logic goal oriented effort in my daily life as a software rngineer. I play Dip to have fun and for the social aspects. Poker, now that is another story. At the casino is all business. But there is *money* on the line there. Dip (a d pretty much all board games with multiple plyers) is a social game.

Re. Preventing metagaming/cross-gaming

In one of the very first games I played here, it turned out three countries were being played by one player. Anonymity did not stop this person from signing up for three countries, destroying the game, wasting everyone's time, and creating conflict with verbal abuse. It was the verbal abuse that was reported to the mods who then uncovered the meta-gaming from there (and banned said player). Given that, in a game that is not identified to the mods for any reason, and/or with a clever metagamer using a number of different e-mail addresses and identities, it doesn't appear that there is anything to stop a determined metagamer from doing the same thing today.

Hence, to work around that, I largely either set up games and invite players who I've had good experiences with, and then continue to invite return players to the "series", or play in invited games. This doesn't eliminate the possibility of being in a game with a metagamer, but it certainly reduces the chances.

Playing anonymous definitely cuts down on other aspects of metagaming though. As you definitely notice ratings-oriented players going after top-rated players in non-anonymous games (which after my most recent, I think I'm done with), and players going after players who have stabbed them before (especially repeatedly, even if past instances were anonymous) in other games when they can see a player's identity up front as opposed to after a game. It is much easier to eliminate play based on grudges from past games via anonymity.

What you described in the first paragraph wasn't metagaming, but a multi. That would be a cheat of another color.

Ok, I was taking metagaming to mean "Any strategy, action, or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game."

Ah. I guess I'm used to the webdip definition where metagaming used factors outside the game versus multi which is clearly the same user multiple accounts. Moot point though.