AWIY's blacklist of dishonest peoples

[Aethyr]

Blaalz, you make some excellent points. To clarify, I was not necessary advocating that NAPs be ignored, nor was there intent to dinegrate those to adhere to them out of their own personal sense of honor (or sheer pragmatism). To further clarify my own position, I will personally avoid entering into NAPs unless I have some confidence they will be upheld by the other player(s), and then (most likely) only for a finite period of time. Why? Because I intend to honor my agreements, but do not wish to limit my future flexibility. That said, am I saying I will absolutely never break an agreement? Probaly not, but under the right set of circumstances, who knows...

Finally, I absolutely concur with your observation that you will carry YOUR past experiences from game to game. On a human plane, this is to be expected to some degree. What I sharply object to is the notion that there should be some sort of "master list" of "violators" presumably to help other (new) players. It would be just as silly to suggest that there be a list of names of those who commonly ally with each other (secretly or not) so the rest of us know who to watch out for.

After all, I'm sure there are many "positive" experiences that are carried over from game as well, yes? Over time, these experiences lead to greater confidence and an increased likelihood of a future alliance, yes? It could be argured that this puts the other players without this benefit at somewhat of a disadvantge, yes? And all the while everyone feels "honorable" about keeping their agreement. So, you protect your backside so as to concentrate your attention on a foe who may not enjoy a simular advantage. Where's the honor in that?

This is a war game premised on world domination. Should there be temporary alliances? Sure, but the concept of a "binding" and permanent NAP seems quite incongruent to me, and keeping some type of global list based on this premise would (further) imbalance play.

[Sandman]

Anonymous attack spells make the idea of a database of trustworthy players pointless. What happens when one player casts a misleading anonymous ritual to dupe another player into attacking a third party? Both dupes will accuse the other of violating their NAP, and to an extent, both will be right.

[NTJedi]

Sandman said:
Anonymous attack spells make the idea of a database of trustworthy players pointless. What happens when one player casts a misleading anonymous ritual to dupe another player into attacking a third party? Both dupes will accuse the other of violating their NAP, and to an extent, both will be right.

Anonymous attack spells cannot be proven without hacking into the turn log. These cannot be made as part of any NAP for this reason.

[DrPraetorious]

It goes both ways.

There are advantages to taking risks in general - so if you sign NAPs with people, and gamble that they'll keep them (which is generally what I do), you're going to be in better shape in those games where it pays off.

OTOH, if you have a reputation for *rarely* breaking NAPs, this may be to your advantage since suspicious neighbors will waste troops guarding their borders with you. If you break them a lot, obviously they won't sign NAPs with you at all.

One of the enjoyable things about MP dom3 is the great diversity in strategy and approach. Any effort to "enforce" honorable play risks jeopordizing that.

As for lamers, I'd support a list of quitters 100%. All's fair in love and war, but if you quit too much (which is obviously open to interpretation), I'd like to know.

But I think any such list is invariably going to devolve into a recrimination-filled flamewar; this discussion has been very civil so far because the one person who's name-was-named happened to have a good sense of humor about it.

As for anonymous attack spells - if someone casts an anonymous attack spell at me, and I know it was them, I attack them. Likewise if someone starts walking void spectres through my territory. I strongly oppose "legalism" in dominions3 - the ingame communications aren't stored, and I'm not going to go over my ingame diplomacy with my lawyer. I'd much rather deal with someone who occasionally breaks their treaties than someone who tries to weasel around with what they do and don't mean.

Finally, as an American, I reserve the right to attack anyone who has both the intent and ability to acquire anonymous attack spells which they might cast against me .

[NTJedi]

DrPraetorious said:
As for lamers, I'd support a list of quitters 100%. All's fair in love and war, but if you quit too much (which is obviously open to interpretation), I'd like to know.

I previously discussed this issue with Gandalf, basically the list would contain just facts as listed below.
Name/Contacts of Individual:
Game Turn when player dropped:
Number of remaining provinces owned by the individual when the player was dropped:
Name/Date of the game:


Obviously one bad game drop wouldn't ruin a reputation, yet a dozen will make any game host frown at having that flaky/lamer player participate.

[Rathar]

This thread and a website based on this concept are very very bad ideas.

The potential for witch-hunt is enormous plus you immediately run into the problem of who polices the police. There are more reasons why this is bad, very bad but those are sufficient imho.

Take a step back, put on your common sense goggles and stare at this again.

Rathar

[NTJedi]

Aethyr said:
Blaalz, you make some excellent points. To clarify, I was not necessary advocating that NAPs be ignored, nor was there intent to dinegrate those to adhere to them out of their own personal sense of honor (or sheer pragmatism). To further clarify my own position, I will personally avoid entering into NAPs unless I have some confidence they will be upheld by the other player(s), and then (most likely) only for a finite period of time. Why? Because I intend to honor my agreements, but do not wish to limit my future flexibility. That said, am I saying I will absolutely never break an agreement? Probaly not, but under the right set of circumstances, who knows...

That's all fine... sounds good.

Aethyr said:
Finally, I absolutely concur with your observation that you will carry YOUR past experiences from game to game. On a human plane, this is to be expected to some degree. What I sharply object to is the notion that there should be some sort of "master list" of "violators" presumably to help other (new) players. It would be just as silly to suggest that there be a list of names of those who commonly ally with each other (secretly or not) so the rest of us know who to watch out for.

The purpose of the list is to simply record the events and treaties of each game. Historical information which can be used by new players helping remove one of their MANY disadvantages.

Aethyr said:
After all, I'm sure there are many "positive" experiences that are carried over from game as well, yes? Over time, these experiences lead to greater confidence and an increased likelihood of a future alliance, yes? It could be argured that this puts the other players without this benefit at somewhat of a disadvantge, yes?

Correct... yet the new players should have as many disadvantages removed as possible for better game balance.

Aethyr said:
And all the while everyone feels "honorable" about keeping their agreement. So, you protect your backside so as to concentrate your attention on a foe who may not enjoy a simular advantage. Where's the honor in that?

As I have previously been saying, "Players can break NAPs without warning or blindly drop games". The only individuals not wanting to record the historic events of a game are those wanting to keep the joy of taking advantage of new players to the gaming community.

Aethyr said:
This is a war game premised on world domination. Should there be temporary alliances? Sure, but the concept of a "binding" and permanent NAP seems quite incongruent to me, and keeping some type of global list based on this premise would (further) imbalance play.

I agree there should not be any "binding" and/or permanent NAP. If there was a record of the treaties from each game which became available for view by everyone once the game was finished then you can bet veterans and new players would be visiting this website. The information would only display what veteran players already know and what should be known by new players thus bringing a closer game balance. Otherwise the new players will continue to be the blind pigeons.

[Aethyr]

NT--

Either I'm getting tired, or you're wearing me down...I think we agree more than we disagree, and I'm totally with you on the list of players who "drop out" as long as we recognize that none of us are immue to circumstances beyond our control. So, we'll all need some "grace" from time to time.