Taking All suggestions under consideration for PDL 2021

[Custer]

I'm all for subs. Especially the toasted spicy Italian. Now that is good!

And the only incentive they need is the chance to stab me in the back. What more could they ask for? LoL

As a matter of fact, I just lost another game. And I've already signed up for another. While I'm waiting for the "league". Two months of shut down what else is there to do besides play Diplomacy!

Play ball!

Custer

[Latanst1]

I second the six games per tournament suggestion.

Personally, I would prefer to play two tournament games simultaneously rather than no tournament games over the span of several weeks (which happened more than once during the most recent round) Idle hand and all that...

[Custer]

Agreed, 2 or 3 games at the same time works for me.

Custer

[MasterGR]

It seems to me that some of my earlier comments were misinterpreted. There's nothing wrong with either division, all I'm suggesting is that for sub allocation to different divisions the same system is used as for new player allocation to divisions when the league begins every year. Regarding which rank to use, I would recommend the standard game rank instead of the all-game one, as the league itself only plays standard games. As for incentivizing subs, yes that makes sense that there should be incentives. An average score still achieves that, as currently whose score a sub inherits is actually random (and in fact likely to be a low score if we assume that dropouts generally quit because they are not doing well). I do like the idea of not replacing players in round 4.

Regarding deadlines and number of games, as Mike pointed out it's going to be hard to get consensus there. One thing to note, is that a player who likes playing many games at a time can always get there by joining other non-PDL games. On the other hand, a player who can only play 1-2 games at a time (e.g. someone with a full time job and young kids such as myself) could be discouraged from joining the league because of the amount of the commitment required when the game load is big. As for the deadlines themselves, I had communications issues even in the late game in at least one case, where because of my correspondent's busy life I received a proposal for a potential 2-way only 3 hours before the deadline. However, because of the time difference I only read it 30 min before the deadline (at 7am), which felt too rushed to commit to it (166092. PDL D1 Mar B, correspondent was Groo). In fact, if the game is dragging in the late game people can always finalize, but that was extremely rare in the league which means that people needed the time (I finalized a few times myself, but others didn't when I did).

Also, to answer the below:

Just reading @MasterGRs post again and I have a question... You want fewer games with the same people (I look forward to the post on the this because I am convinced there is a better maths solution out there), but you want a ratings cap/the standard in Div 1 to remain high?

Quite simply I don't think the player pool is there for that. When I started it I messaged a chunk of the top 25 players on this site and there wasn't the interest. I don't know why. Maybe it would be different now. Maybe people just don't read the forums and are aware of it. I agree the whole point of the league concept is you should be playing players of similar skill and it should be competitive. But if only 40 people from this whole site with ratings from yours down to a 700/800 player join, then you will invariably get games with a real mix of ability.

Potentially if you have fewer games you will also have a smaller player pool, which could make fewer repeats easier... But I agree with you that the fewer repeats is just not trivial. In any case, I think overall the divisions were balanced alright given the constraints that you mention above, the main issue that I found was that subs were not allocated accordingly (and TTBen confirmed they were allocated randomly), which can be fixed fairly easily as discussed above. Even if there is no cap because there aren't enough players interested, just sorting the subs by rank and allocating them accordingly will make a big difference since as you mentioned, "the whole point of the league concept is you should be playing players of similar skill and it should be competitive".

With all that said, some of my games were extremely competitive and I really enjoyed them, even if they left me a little scarred!

[Pete the Great]

I liked the ability to identify bad times for games. I was front end weighted with 3 starts Jan/Feb/Mar which fit my schedule nicely. My fourth was in late summer which made for some difficulties. If
I had to evenly space every three months, I would likely miss some deadlines over the summer months.

2/1/1 deadlines work well for me.

I'm not to hung up on scoring so long as it is easily understood.

It's nice to play everyone once, but not a necessity.

Looking forward to 2021, hopefully I improve over last year.

[Woolgie]

They definitely should be ranked.

Four games worked, I had a bit of a gap between games 1 and 2 and I think 5 games would be better but 4 is ok. 6 is is fine with me but you’ll lose some people so I vote for 5.

I’m against any top board and a league should be a league.

Deadlines at 2/1/1 are good.

The scoring should change and I prefer tweaking the SC count score, but if it’s board leader based scoring is used I’ll still play. I’m here for the games not the points, but some points are important as I think zero at the end of the year will disenfranchise people.

Some overlap is fine, if the bulk of a game can be done before the next one starts. Assuming 2/1/1 then your probably looking at reaching 1908 in 40-45 days. Maybe starting games ~6 weeks apart will work? Say 16th Jan, 1st Mar, 16th Apr, 1st Jun, 16th Jul, 1st Sep? With each player only playing in 4 of those 6 start dates.

[TTBen]

I liked the ability to identify bad times for games. I was front end weighted with 3 starts Jan/Feb/Mar which fit my schedule nicely. My fourth was in late summer which made for some difficulties. If
I had to evenly space every three months, I would likely miss some deadlines over the summer months.

2/1/1 deadlines work well for me.

I'm not to hung up on scoring so long as it is easily understood.

It's nice to play everyone once, but not a necessity.

Looking forward to 2021, hopefully I improve over last year.

I'm still trying to settle on a schedule that I think will work, but I'm most likely going to include some type of mechanics for a break (one I'm strongly considering is games every 2 months but you wouldn't play in every 2 month window)

[Pete the Great]

Some overlap is fine, if the bulk of a game can be done before the next one starts. Assuming 2/1/1 then your probably looking at reaching 1908 in 40-45 days. Maybe starting games ~6 weeks apart will work? Say 16th Jan, 1st Mar, 16th Apr, 1st Jun, 16th Jul, 1st Sep? With each player only playing in 4 of those 6 start dates.

I like the idea of 6 week intervals. In reality it will be closer to 7 weeks by the time everyone confirms.

[Custer]

I like no intervals. 12 months, 12 beers, 12 games......



Custer

[Oxmeister]

If there is space in this I'll join next year.

Agree with thoughts on deadlines, I'd play 2/1/1 and also 3/1/1, but 24h would probably be too fast. The Scoring system used last year looks really good to me at a glance.