Are we ever going to change the system to stop hurting honest players vs quitters?

[Tisaac]

Why on earth if somebody quits after everybody has crossed the finish line does a result not stand with them just finishing last place? I am pretty sure if someone times out in this position the result stands, but if they quit it doesn't?

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=482840447

Literally everyone finished turns ago, and this player who could just click the give up race option at any time instead decides to quit on tilt because they spun out. It's absolutely ludicrous this voids the whole game, and wastes an hour of everyone's time. Is there anybody who seriously thinks this is a fair system? Is it seriously so hard to actually implement things that are so overwhelmingly supported by players, because it's beyond tedious dealing with idiots like this. In a perfect world the punishments should be heavier for these players, they ruin the game for everyone else, there should be bans for just blatant, egregious offences like this. Like does anybody seriously want to play with these players?

Have you read the rest of the thread ? Because the answer is : no, it's not implementable within the current BGA framework. If a player quits, it automatically neutralizes the game results, making everyone tie and that quiter lose, not only ELO but also karma. It works the same accross all games on BGA, and basically that's the whole point of Karma. The player cant quit without receiving a penalty so you can filter out opponents based on their karma for instance.

[RazorOz]

Why on earth if somebody quits after everybody has crossed the finish line does a result not stand with them just finishing last place? I am pretty sure if someone times out in this position the result stands, but if they quit it doesn't?

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=482840447

Literally everyone finished turns ago, and this player who could just click the give up race option at any time instead decides to quit on tilt because they spun out. It's absolutely ludicrous this voids the whole game, and wastes an hour of everyone's time. Is there anybody who seriously thinks this is a fair system? Is it seriously so hard to actually implement things that are so overwhelmingly supported by players, because it's beyond tedious dealing with idiots like this. In a perfect world the punishments should be heavier for these players, they ruin the game for everyone else, there should be bans for just blatant, egregious offences like this. Like does anybody seriously want to play with these players?

Have you read the rest of the thread ? Because the answer is : no, it's not implementable within the current BGA framework. If a player quits, it automatically neutralizes the game results, making everyone tie and that quiter lose, not only ELO but also karma. It works the same accross all games on BGA, and basically that's the whole point of Karma. The player cant quit without receiving a penalty so you can filter out opponents based on their karma for instance.

Yes, I should actually moan in a more general thread, rather than specific to Heat, because it's the system that is heavily flawed, and I find it hard to believe everybody can't see how flawed it is. Even the ELO neutralisation does not work as it should.

Heat just suffers from this problem more than most, because there's seemingly an endless supply of players who quit at the last.

[KatoriMotors]

I noticed that this was a particularly big problem for Heat because of how the game functions as soon as I'd played a handful of games. Indeed, despite winning about 50% of my games, my Elo rating has not got any better than it was after my first 6 or 7 games because half the time the wins don't count for anything. In fact, even the modest rating that I do have is mostly because I realized that the Arena mode allows me to play games where people are far less likely to quit, albeit with fewer real players which makes for somewhat less fun games.

Well, I did get booted off myself in the one Arena game where I ran out of time because of a mobile browser crash, but hey, that's fair enough.

In any case, it's clear that the current BGA Elo neutralizing system works particularly badly for a game like Heat where players are meant to keep playing their turns to the end even if they might finish several turns after the winner. I understand that for some games this current system is conceivably more fair than granting regular Elo points when one player quits because one player quitting might benefit other players asymmetrically in some board games. Thus, in a perfect world BGA would have an option for how quitters are handled depending on the game.

Clearly, for Heat, quitters should simply finish last without neutralizing the rest of the game, and that alone would make the system competitively about ten times better.

Currently, the system really does feel rather like playing chess against an opponent who could decide to just flip the board at any moment, including after you already checkmated them, which, instead of making you the winner, makes the result count as a draw. I don't think that's in the spirit of what Arpad Elo intended when he came up with his rating system.

Now, to finish, I want to acknowledge that of course the majority of Heat players I've come across are fair and honest players, but as per usual it is the minority that ruins it for everyone because of what I'd call simply a plain design flaw in the current Elo rating framework.

Cheers.

[RazorOz]

I noticed that this was a particularly big problem for Heat because of how the game functions as soon as I'd played a handful of games. Indeed, despite winning about 50% of my games, my Elo rating has not got any better than it was after my first 6 or 7 games because half the time the wins don't count for anything. In fact, even the modest rating that I do have is mostly because I realized that the Arena mode allows me to play games where people are far less likely to quit, albeit with fewer real players which makes for somewhat less fun games.

Well, I did get booted off myself in the one Arena game where I ran out of time because of a mobile browser crash, but hey, that's fair enough.

In any case, it's clear that the current BGA Elo neutralizing system works particularly badly for a game like Heat where players are meant to keep playing their turns to the end even if they might finish several turns after the winner. I understand that for some games this current system is conceivably more fair than granting regular Elo points when one player quits because one player quitting might benefit other players asymmetrically in some board games. Thus, in a perfect world BGA would have an option for how quitters are handled depending on the game.

Clearly, for Heat, quitters should simply finish last without neutralizing the rest of the game, and that alone would make the system competitively about ten times better.

Currently, the system really does feel rather like playing chess against an opponent who could decide to just flip the board at any moment, including after you already checkmated them, which, instead of making you the winner, makes the result count as a draw. I don't think that's in the spirit of what Arpad Elo intended when he came up with his rating system.

Now, to finish, I want to acknowledge that of course the majority of Heat players I've come across are fair and honest players, but as per usual it is the minority that ruins it for everyone because of what I'd call simply a plain design flaw in the current Elo rating framework.

Cheers.

Yes, I have found Heat to be by far the worst game for encountering quitters too. I think the issue is it can be very explicit in you've lost, in many games it's much more subtle than Heat.

My recommendations for trying to avoid quitters are of course reputation >75%, red thumb any blatant quitters you see (imo it's normally very easy to differentiate between a quitter and someone who simply lost internet connection), turn off beginners and apprentices, 80% of the quitters were beginners or apprentices, and the number of quitters I encountered did go down after this.

Like you, I don't really like the Arena mode atm, I'm hoping it changes for next season. I just don't see the point of having 3 Legends go around turns behind everyone else for the majority of the race in the majority of races, it's less competitive, is worse gameplay, and dilutes game mechanics.

[PaulB-UK]

It might also be that Heat gives you the option to give up (which I haven't seen in other games). I think if you asked a casual player what the difference between giving up (game UX) and quitting (BGA UX) was they would probably think they're the same. In one sense they are, but one neutralises the game and the other doesn't.

[RazorOz]

It might also be that Heat gives you the option to give up (which I haven't seen in other games). I think if you asked a casual player what the difference between giving up (game UX) and quitting (BGA UX) was they would probably think they're the same. In one sense they are, but one neutralises the game and the other doesn't.

You can concede in other games I think, especially 2 player games, without voiding the game and taking the reputation hit.

There is one weird thing about this when it comes to Heat, that at least on desktop it's more effort to quit a game than give up a race once someone has finished (the quit option is hidden away, the concede option is right there next to your actions once someone has finished), and yet numerous times I've seen people quit races they could have instead given up, why?

[Mars4ever]

I 200% agree with the statement. I can't complete HALF of my games because of players that quit, and Heat is the only game where this problem is that frequent.
There are a lot of board games that can't regularly be completed if a player leaves the table (just think about Puerto Rico), so in that case giving penalties is the only solution if you can't replace them with an AI, but hey, Heat is a RACE! In every car race, going out of the track is not a bug but part of the game, so come on!

[KatoriMotors]

I 200% agree with the statement. I can't complete HALF of my games because of players that quit, and Heat is the only game where this problem is that frequent.
There are a lot of board games that can't regularly be completed if a player leaves the table (just think about Puerto Rico), so in that case giving penalties is the only solution if you can't replace them with an AI, but hey, Heat is a RACE! In every car race, going out of the track is not a bug but part of the game, so come on!

Indeed, a part of the problem is that in the "real world" retiring from a race because of crashes or car failures is just a part of motor racing. In fact, in stuff like online simracing, people get their cars damaged and just quit out of the game all the time instead of limping to the finish, and it's not a problem to anyone since that's just what you do when you no longer have a shot at a good result. Heat works very similarly despite being a board game, but unfortunately the BGA rating framework is not at all designed for this type of game.

And I guess unless something changes about that, there's nothing we can do.

[sanchochili]

Agreed. Please fix this. My suggestion for those that leave (or are kicked for time expiring) is to either turn them into legends and automate their moves or just have them be last on the podium. Either way it shouldn't affect people gaining elo and if it happens after someone crosses the finish line, that has to be okay right? It literally just happened where I crossed the finish line and "won" but hadn't taken the podium yet (table 497862162) and the player went offline and never came back and was kicked out, which affects everyone's potential elo and just feels like a waste of time for some of us. It also affects that player's reputation and they are fairly new to BGA anyway, they probably thought it was okay to leave since someone crossed the finish line.

[KatoriMotors]

turning players who leave into Legends would be so nice, only issue being that you couldn't necessarily do it with the orange player as of right now.