wow, just WOW
we went over this and seemed to all agree reliability had NOTHING to do with taking over CD positions. We seemed to be in further agreement that it was far too easy to simply make up for it by taking over someone elses CD. Now we go right back to where we were....why did we discuss everything and why did you suggest making changes when almost everyone agreed? This is frankly STUPID. I am not going to tip toe around the incredibly stupid idea this is. You do nothing more than reward slackers with this structure and you deteriorate the level of play. yes, it really is that simple!
If you cater to the lowest level player, that is what you will attract. If you simply want sheer numbers of inept, careless, fly by night player, then you are doing a fine job, keep this ridiculous system in place. If however you want to improve the level of play and want to attract better players and KEEP those you develop here, then fix what most certainly IS broken!
I come here with a long Diplomacy past, I heard many things and decided to find out for myself and those things I heard, they were TRUE. I decided to speak up and give ways to improve, to point out some bad ideas. I was met with resentment and resistance to change, the thought was to cater to the "casual" gamer. Now you do this for that same reason.
Again, I must point out this is incredible short sightedness. Even casual players who decide they LIKE this game called Diplomacy will search for better competition when they discover NMR's are simply not tolerated and are treated like the plague on other sites. Yes, they exist everywhere but on other sites they are not accepted and not "embraced" as they seem to be here.
Can I say it again, this ide is STUPID and Ill Conceived, I am here to play my WW4 game, If that went well and I found a good group, I might have stayed around for further games. While you still do have some decent people here, I am afraid to say you have too few and you WILL lose them given time, that is if these policies that reward poor play and/or cheating remain in place. As for me, I do not plan on staying around UNLESS things improve, each time it seems like you care, it's dropped and dismissed...not the sign of an exceptional Dip community now is it?
to make things even worse, I see a few postings that actually SUPPORT these ideas...allow players to easily and fully recover from NMR's and CD's, allow people to drop positions as others join and then rejoin in a prearranged alliance, it goes on and on, there really is no understanding some people, some like to take advantage of poor players so the more you have, the better they feel beating up on lesser talent. To put it frankly, those who agree with these positions as you have them are simply BAD Diplomacy players, no two ways about that, they would get eaten alive on quality sites but they thrive here. If this is the people you want, hey keep them here by doing nothing.