I'd like to see, maybe only when I see the other player profile or in game, what's my record against him (like: 1v, 2l, 1t).

+1  This could be done third-party if game history were preserved and made public.  But we are forced to deleted games. 

Storing games is quite expensive (the way they are stored at the moment with replay and all) - so storing 3000 is much easier than storing 15000. Once we get to optimize that we might be able to retain them, but until them we have to keep our DB sane. Sorry for that.

The idea to maintain player vs player specific stats however is really nice!

Alex: How about this.  What if you setup an API call for retrieving archived material.  Maybe even a push model (instead of the current pull one), which might, say, e-mail an XML file, or call an external webservice to post some data.  Then a third party service (such as one that I might setup) could do the archiving and storage, and serve the material (perhaps in limited form or duration).

yes, please do so, Pistos

I might try sometime to reverse engineer the replays.  If I can crack it, then we could have a site where you enter the game number, and a spider will go and "record" the replay and preserve it.  That'll open the door up for plenty more stats and information.

Cool as that is, is not what I'm proposing. I'd like to have that simple record view of past games against the player when I watch his profile.

@Alex:

For mulpin's idea he only wants a simple win lose records vs. an opponent. Why would that be required to keep the games (at least the full games). I see what you're saying with storing 3000 vs. 15000... but what if once a game is "deleted" it is actually just reduced to a simple "Mulpin won vs. ____" or "You lost vs. ____" entry.

There's no need to store the playback for a simple "I've won vs. this person X times." is there? At least I don't see why it would ever have to be that way. That would allow people to keep track of their records and take up less space for doing so that keeping the games.

@Pistos:

If an API were made... could it be possible instead of going by "game number" to run a scan through daily of each "users" API and "retrieve" the moves? W@hile that may seem daunting... why not space it out? And if you do it on a daily or even in a shorter time interval (depending on the size of the user-base) would it really be that daunting? Most players only go through so many rounds a day (though I don't know how much room or complex the records for a round are, even less-so a whole game).

It would seem simpler that way for the user. But you could justify that to be a "Pro" option - another incentive for people to work towards that goal. I know I'm working on getting myself there as quickly as possible.

@darthnerdus

Very true. The problem is that right now games are stored in full or not at all. So adding a 3rd option would require quite a bit of work. And while we are happy to do that work - we need to plan carefully and more importantly prioritize carefully to get the right stuff done at the right time. So this is not on the list yet, as there are many more (and more critical) things to do first.

@Alex:

I completely understand. I was just thinking out loud that it would be much easier to make a simple "record" keeping system at this point than to setup a system to view or "keep" all games. However, the latter of those two options could possibly be accomplished through APIs and third-party developers (which we have an abundance of here) that may help accomplish something great without putting much stress on you. But hey, at this point I think we're mostly thinking out loud. And I don't have the time to bring any of my ideas into fruition quite yet so I'm mostly having to sit back and brainstorm at this point when I get the chance. Ugh, I hate school sometimes.

My plate is full with Weewar third-party development, but it is "in my eye" to get to reverse engineering things like the chat log and the replays.